by Pfantazm

	Inside the cabin it was quite dark. The two questors stood just inside the door, which stood open admitting sunlight. "Mistress Aspasia, may I introduce Sir Madoc of Fieldgate and Thom At-the-Well, known as the Dark Rogue." Thom was stunned. Even he hadn't known Madoc's last name, and he was quite positive that the apprentice shouldn't have been able to know him by both identities. "Don't be alarmed, gentlemen," said a second female voice from somewhere in the dark. "My apprentice, Odilia, likes to show off sometimes. That was foolish of you, Odilia, divining their names while I was conducting my magic." "I waited until you were in hiatus, Mistress." "Even so. We'll have to discuss this later. Time is short. My apprentice tells me you need bats' wings?" Sir Madoc briefly sketched out the plague of Cairncross, Magister Eleazar's cure, and their idea about coming by the required items more quickly. "I'm quite sure I have what you need," Aspasia said. "The difficulty is in finding it. At the moment, I cannot allow light to enter my pentacle, and it is in that room where my supplies are kept. I believe I know where they are.... Wait a moment." Thom saw Aspasia's cloaked form disappear behind a curtain, back in the direction from which she came. Moments later, she returned with a jar. She stepped forward into the light. Aspasia was quite beautiful. She had long brown hair, bright blue eyes and a small mouth. She appeared to be young, in her thirties, belying the echo of wisdom they had heard in her voice. The jar she bore was labelled BAT WINGS. "Marvellous. I got it on the first try. Is something wrong?" Madoc was staring transfixed at Aspasia with an odd expression on his face. "Sir Madoc?" she asked. "I'm sorry... I..." he stammered. Thom jumped in. "I thank you, Mistress Aspasia. This is the last item we needed. You have no idea the trouble we went through getting everything else, like that silvered glass, remember, Sir Madoc?" The knight was back to staring again. "A silvered glass?" Aspasia asked. "Why did...? What were the symptoms of this plague?" "Fever, convulsions, pasty yellowed skin,..." Thom said. "You sound like an herbalist, Dark Rogue," Aspasia said with irony ringing in her voice. "My mother was an herbalist, and all the while I aided her in my youth, I never saw anything like it." "This distresses me," Aspasia said, putting her finger to her lip. Odilia interrupted. "The hiatus is almost up, Mistress." "Thank you. Please, both of you, wait outside. I'd like to hear more about this plague. You'd best get outside while we prepare." The wizard went back behind the curtain, the jar still in her hands. Odilia shooed the men out the door. They had just taken their previous places against the wall when the trapdoor atop the cabin banged open very loudly and a great fireball spewed from the roof. "By the gods," Thom muttered, but in an instant, Madoc was on his feet and knocking at the door. "Aspasia? Odilia? Are you alright?" He pounded on the door three times. Thom had arrived in time to hear someone knock three times back. They heard Odilia's voice, muffled by a thickness of door, say, "Everything is fine. That was supposed to happen." Thom exhaled. "Wizards." They returned once more to the side of the building. Thom looked up at the lingering smoke and thought the better of leaning against the cabin. He sat a couple of feet away. "You were about to tell me how you came to be a thief," Madoc said as he sat, back against the cabin. "Well, since I no longer have any secrets, it seems, I may as well tell you the whole story. "I've already told you about my parents," Thom began. "We were wanderers. We travelled from town to town, doing whatever jobs needed doing. I was too young at the time to contribute much for farm work or what-have-you, so I helped Ma tend to the sick. "We came upon one town, I don't even remember its name. My mother's brother, Uncle Timmit, was there at the time as well. I got to visit with him while my parents did their work. Timmit was a wanderer as well. He always seemed better off than my parents were when they met. We'd all assumed he was a merchant. Anyway, while my uncle and I were in the tavern for the afternoon a man came in and said the blacksmith's had been burgled, lost half a pound of gold. All that he had. The guards had captured two strangers for the crime. "It was my parents. They's been arrested just because they were strangers, I'm sure, and tinkers like my father have always had a bad, undeserved reputation. I know they were innocent. They were good people. They'd taught me right from wrong, and before you go making any remarks about how well they did, I'll thank you to wait until I'm finished. "The man hadn't mentioned me. My parents hadn't said anything either, to keep me safe. I was with Uncle Timmit and there was no point putting me in the orphanage. No offense, Madoc. "I never saw them again. They died in the local lord's dungeons. It might even have been Lord Dunholm for all I can remember. My uncle just told me he'd found out somehow. "As you've no doubt guessed, my uncle was not a merchant, but a thief, and a damn good one. Well, good at it. He taught me everything he knew. "He knew someone who was a guest of the lord whose gaol held my parents and this prisoner managed to get word to Timmit. There was a fever that had swept through the dungeon. My mother had wanted to help the prisoners, but the guards wouldn't let her get her hands on supplies. They called her a witch and tortured her. Thom picked under his fingernails. "I hadn't thought about my parents in years, then all of a sudden Timmit comes and tells me they're dead. I started thinking about them after that. "I thought about right and wrong, and about Uncle Timmit. Uncle Timmit had taught me my letters and especially my numbers, but thievery was everything to him. He was greedy. He took as much as he could whenever he could. I'd done enough jobs with him to know how much business he did. That's how he lived so well, and how he gave the impression he was a wealthy merchant, above petty theft. But it didn't take me long to figure out that it had been Timmit who'd nicked that blacksmith's gold. "Timmit had kept track of them, you see. But he was too cowardly to help his own sister out of jail by admitting to the crime himself. He could even have busted them out if he'd wanted to. I know how easy that is. Most lords guard their jewels better than their prisoners. But he didn't want to risk that either. "I decided that I couldn't be like my uncle, just taking all the time. I remembered what my father had taught me about right and wrong. But I also couldn't forget how callous those guards had been, thinking that dead prisoners were easier to feed, so let 'em die. I had to do something else. "I became the Dark Rogue. I didn't have the training to do much else but steal. But I could pick my targets. I could limit myself to those people who deserve a little bad fortune for the way they treated others. I had some lean times when I just couldn't find anyone who was deserving of my talents. My stomach was empty, but my heart was full, thinking that just briefly, the world was a better place. It never lasted, of course. "I don't know whatever became of Timmit, and I don't really care. I hope he's rotting in a cell somewhere. He was always afraid of getting caught, and it would be a fitting end for him." "What do you do with the things you steal?" Madoc wanted to know. "Fence 'em. The stuff usually went back on the market, the black market anyway. I've kept track: there's been one diamond necklace I've stolen on three separate occasions from three different people. One of them had actually sold his son into slavery before he came into his money. I think he was the worst of my targets. A real rat, that one. That necklace keeps calling me, I think." Before Thom could lapse into more nostalgia, Madoc asked, "What about the money from the fences?" "I took some to live, usually for about a month, supplemented with whatever I could get for free. I never paid for a room, for example, if I could stay in the forests. The rest I distributed as I saw fit. Some of the people my victims had wronged suddenly came into found money, though not right away, since that drew attention to them. The rest usually went to good works. "But sometimes I would make myself proud. You recall the man who sold his son? I tracked the son down. Took a couple of long winter months to do it, but I did it. First I bought the man - he was grown and about the same age as me by then - and gave him the rest of the money from that necklace to set him up after setting him free. He's living in the north now, as far away from his father as he can get. The old bastard doesn't even know his boy's alive." Madoc looked at Thom with new eyes. "I had no idea you did that sort of thing. It's too bad you had to use thievery to correct those wrongs." "I took what power I had and used it for good. I didn't see what else I could do." Thom was beginning to blush. "So we're really not so different. Two means to the same end." "Does this mean you approve, Sir Madoc?" Thom said jokingly. "Will you let me go to return to my crusade for justice?" "I don't ever want to let you go." Madoc stood up and approached Thom. He offered a hand to help him up. When Thom was upright, Madoc hugged him. "I don't suppose you have any idea how we can stay together?" "No, but I'll have three days' ride between Cairncross and Aragon to think. Barring further adventures." Thom kissed Madoc tenderly. Then they began to exchange ideas. They had still gotten nowhere and were feeling somewhat depressed when Odilia came to collect them. Aspasia's spell was finished. Sunlight illuminated the pentacle which had been burned into the floor. Unreadable letters circled the outside of it and candles, which Odilia was now collecting, had been placed at its points. "May I ask what you were doing here?" Thom said. "I don't see why not," Aspasia said, looking up from her book. "There has been a growing disturbance in the spirit world for some time now. I have been trying to determine what the problem is. I haven't found it yet, but I know now where to look. I wouldn't concern myself with it. It shouldn't affect this plane." She continued to leaf through the pages in her tome. Madoc was trying very hard not to look at Aspasia, and instead took in the room. It smelled vaguely of sulphur. The points of the pentacle all led the way to a doorway, covered over with heavy cloth. On the walls between the doorways were stout bookshelves crammed full with jars, bottles, small chests, and thick leather-bound books. Aspasia pulled a second one off the shelf nearest her and sat down crosslegged to find the page she wanted. Aspasia looked up at Sir Madoc when she realized she was being stared at again. "I do hope you're not smitten with me, goodknight, that you stare so. What they say about wizards and celibacy is true." "No, it's not that, it's that you remind me so much.... I'm sorry. I won't let it happen again." Aspasia seemed satisfied with this, and went back to her book. Madoc looked for the jar of bats' wings. Odilia swept the floor. Thom tried not to think about the spirit world. "That's what I thought," Aspasia announced. "I can't find any kind of cure in my books that requires a glass mirror, but I have the sneaking suspicion I know what Eleazar is up to. What were the other things he requested of you?" Thom named the items from memory. Aspasia nodded. "It sounds as though your plague is the Flavid Ague. As you've guessed, it's a magick-based disease. This," she said as she turned the book in her lap around, "is the spell you need to cast it." All six of the items they had been sent for were needed, in much smaller amounts than Eleazar had requested, and one more: two drops of blood from an infant boy. "Obviously, Eleazar couldn't ask you for that. One of the villagers' children would have to do. These figures, one sawgrass pod, one scale from a bat's wing, and so on, will make enough base to infect one person." "So little?" Thom interrupted. "I thought spells take more than that." "Some do," Aspasia explained. "It depends largely on what you're trying to accomplish. My explorations of the other planes from today required a lot of ingredients, and much ceremony. A curse or plague doesn't need raw materials, but it will sap the caster's energy. If we did have to use so much for the simple spells, we'd be forever collecting ingredients and never getting any work done. "On the other hand, if he's infecting the whole village, and keeping them sick, then he's going through these things like water. Also, he must already have one or more spritestones and mirrors, since the village was sick when you arrived, yet he still needs more. I would say that Eleazar is gathering enough supplies to make the entire kingdom ill." "Why would he do that?" Madoc asked. "My guess is to incapacitate everyone long enough to take over the kindgom. You can't fight if you're sick." "What can we do about it?" "For a start, don't bring him the horsephlox you've got there. I could certainly use it; it is also part of the cure for Flavid Ague. I could prepare a curative, but it will take time. Meanwhile, we don't know that Eleazar hasn't got someone else gathering ingredients for him. He may be readying his spell even now. You two must stop him. What I don't understand is why you haven't caught him at it before now. To keep that many people sick for that long, he'd have to be recasting the spell periodically. But you always come when he's not. And he couldn't be leaving his extra supplies lying around for you to see. He must know when you're coming." "One moment, Magister, why must we stop him?" Thom asked. "As a wizard yourself, wouldn't you be better prepared?" "I'd never get near him," Aspasia explained. "He'd be able to detect any magic that came within 100 feet of him. Which reminds me." She closed her eyes and let her shoulders relax. "It's one of the most basic protections...." Suddenly Aspasia opened her eyes and looked at Madoc's hand. Madoc held up the dog trainer's ring that Eleazar had so helpfully provided so that he needn't worry about his prisoner wandering off. "That's how he's doing it. He can see us coming." Madoc was furious. "He's been using us all along." "I know how we can stop him," Thom said. "Is there some way we can know when he's vulnerable?" "Once he's in the process of freshening the Ague spell, he will be unable to defend himself. It's quite difficult to break out of the spell without infecting yourself. And you'll be able to tell that he's begun the spell. You'll be able to see a yellow haze in the air if you're near his hut, but not inside his sanctum." "Sanctum?" Thom asked. "He needs to reserve a small space around him, so he is not affected by his own spell." "So if I was inside the sanctum while Eleazar was casting the spell, I would be safe, but I wouldn't necessarily know when Eleazar was vulnerable," Thom reasoned. "However," Madoc continued, "if someone else were outside the sanctum, he could signal you when the spell began." Thom looked Madoc in the eye. "But that second person would take sick." Madoc looked back. "There is a cure. He would be alright." Thom looked to Aspasia. "How large would the sanctum be?" "Hard to say. He would want to keep his workspace inside the sanctum, and it would be a globe shape. It could be as large as 100 feet in radius." "Leave it to us," Madoc assured her.

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