He wasn’t alone on the road of course, just
alone in his mind. On either side of him the refugees were going in
and out of the city. Refugees that had already been in the city for
a time would turn off to the right, into the steadily growing
warren of tents that stood just outside the city. There were
hundreds of them now, and the number was constantly growing. The
refugees would enter the city and see there was nothing there for
them, then the army would put them up outside the city in old,
partially ruined tents, and leave them. Somehow Dan’r never
wondered how long they would last there, with no food, no income.
How long would it be before the combined poverty of thousands led
to riots and slaughter. All Dan’r noticed was that eventually,
after a good three quarters an hour of walking, he was the only one
on the right side of the road.
On his left though, there was a line. A long,
continuous line of weary, dirty, slowly shambling people, waiting
to do nothing more than join the already growing throng outside of
Wraegn. They had been herded there by the church; Dan’r
occasionally saw church soldiers patrolling the other side of the
road on horseback, making sure the refugees made no trouble, but
the church would help them no more. They were being left to the
will of their god and Dan’r, even at his best, could not have saved
them all.
***
They must have come from Rege, Dan’r thought
as he once again moved close to the winding line of exhaustion and
dirt. The church soldiers were patrolling on the other side of the
line, a fair step away from the road, but Dan’r couldn’t risk being
seen. Anytime he heard the trotting of a horse, he would move
closer to the refugees, would hope that he looked just as dirty and
downtrodden as the rest of them.
Dan’r was in the middle of them, a church
soldier was nearby, taking longer than usual watching the line.
Dan’r watched the people, shuffling slowly. Every so often he would
see a mother with her children, hear a child crying in the
distance, hear someone cough as their exhaustion and malnourishment
caught up to them in the form of a cold. Then as he watched, he
realized that the refugees were mainly women, and the elderly,
almost every one. Heads down, eyes looking like they had given up
all hope, the women and the elderly walked slowly towards the
nothing that awaited them in Wraegn, and Dan’r suddenly wondered if
there would be any riots, he wondered if the combined refugees
could muster anything but frightened acceptance.
Eventually though, Dan’r reached the end of
the winding line, his last chance to ask about the fog, his last
chance to be like the hero in the stories and help someone. There
was an old man at the end, one of the few, walking with his wife.
They were both old, and stooped, and the man walked with a limp and
a cane, but he looked like he might be able to answer. Dan’r would
take some papers from his cloak, and hand him several gold marks
when he asked his question. Then he would get his answer, and he
would help the man, and his legend would continue, with a little
more realism than usual.
‘Hello.’ He said simply as he approached the
couple, and waited for the old man to respond.
Surprisingly it was the woman who replied,
the old man simply stared forward, fixed on the back of the person
in front of him, absently putting one foot after the other as he
walked slowly. The woman was just as old as the man, her eyes just
as dead, but still she managed to look at Dan’r.
‘Yes?’ was all she said, through half-lidded
eyes that spoke of exhaustion.
‘Where…where do you come from?’
‘Holfar.’
‘That’s a week’s walk from here, no?’ Dan’r
asked, and the woman simply nodded. Even as addled from the alcohol
as Dan’r was, he knew he would not get much out of the woman. She
had given up.
‘You left before the fog?’
The woman nodded again.
‘When did it reach Holfar?’
‘One week ago.’
‘Where is it now?’ The woman simply shrugged
in reply to Dan’r’s last question, then turned and walked back
after her husband, not even closing the distance as she walked.
Dan’r knew he would get no more, so he turned
and continued on. It wasn’t until the long cobblestone road from
Wraegn turned to dirt, and then sun hit the very edge of the
horizon, that Dan’r realized he had not given the old couple the
coin. He had not helped them, and they would die, because he was
drunk, constantly. He had killed the old man and woman, had killed
all of the travelers on that road, just as he had killed the thug
in Wraegn. He could have helped them, could have done something,
however small, for any of them. His Art would have let him. But the
alcohol would not.
Dan’r sat that night under a low tree just
off the road. He sat while the stars and the moon turned above him,
while the world and its inhabitants sounded around him, and he paid
no notice. He simply sat, staring into the darkness ahead of him,
tears rolling down his cheeks as he drank once again.
III
Dan’r had his same dream that night, and he
thought the same thoughts as he woke. How could he be here, how
could he have lost his love, his wife, his life. How could the gods
be so cruel. Once again, as they had every morning for longer than
Dan’r cared to remember, his hands shook, his yellowed fingertips
struggled to open a new wineskin. He always struggled in the
morning, always struggled until he had a few large drinks into him,
then his mind and hands calmed down again, back into the haze he
was used to. He simply wished the haze would cover more of the
pain.
He left the tree early in the morning, before
the sun had topped the horizon. He hated to sleep. The longer he
slept, the further into his dream he got. It was always worse when
he remembered the end, when he remembered the look on Maeglin’s
face as she stood in the doorway, the ocean spray soaking her white
dress through, her arm reaching towards him as he was swept away.
For years he had thought it was sorrow and loss, that it was fear
and pain that stained her otherwise perfect face. Now he knew that
it was contempt and relief. He drank deeply.
She had never wanted him, never wanted to be
his wife. It had been all him, all Dan’r. He and her father had
forced her to marry him. Why would anyone want him. He was lower
than dirt. The only reason they had married was her father, and her
father had only wanted the prestige Dan’r would bring to his family
as an Artist. They didn’t want Dan’r, no-one ever did. No-one ever
had. His mother had left early on, leaving him when he was still a
child. He could no longer remember anything about her, just the
shadow of a woman screaming at his father before slamming the door
and running out, never to be seen again. Dan’r drank again.
His father had blamed him. Blamed him for
everything. It was Dan’r that made his wife leave. It was Dan’r
that had abandoned the family business, watched without caring as
it failed slowly. It was Dan’r who had destroyed his life. Dan’r
would never measure up as a merchant, as a son. Why should he even
try. Sure, his father had come crawling back briefly when he became
an Artist, but that was only for loans to save his struggling
business, the same business Dan’r had abandoned. There was never
any love for his son. Dan’r walked on, and the sun rose overhead,
and the wine grew warmer the less there was in the skein.
By midday, when the sun was at its height,
and beat down the hardest on the empty plains around him, Dan’r had
finished his second wineskin. His hands were already shaking as he
grabbed unsteadily for one of the remaining pieces of paper in his
cloak. He felt only three wineskins left as he pulled one out. He
was out of almost everything, and had no paint. He only had a push
or two left, and was out of fire, ice, and thunder as well.
He stopped for a minute when he finally
managed to uncork the wineskin. He had never remembered it being
that hard, never remembered his hands shaking so violently. The fog
in his mind, the haze that seemed to be covering everything made it
hard, but for a brief moment lucidity returned to him and he stared
at the skein in his hands, stared at the uncorked mouth that stared
back at him.
‘I’m shaking,’ he thought, and his hands
agreed. ‘When did I start shaking? When did I get this bad? Am…am I
dying?’ he asked himself these questions and more as he slowly
lifted the wine to his lips. He couldn’t understand it, he knew
there was something wrong now, more so than ever before, but he
couldn’t understand how it had come on so quickly. He was fine the
night before, then the fight at the bar, and ever since his mind
had been hazier than ever before.
‘I need to stop!’ he thought in his last
moment of lucidity, then the haze over his mind crawled back, sank
its hooks back into his brain, and he drank. His hands stopped
shaking and he stumbled on again, oblivious to the sun above him as
he dragged his feet slowly, heavily over the rough dirt road.
The haze was like a heavy blanket thrown over
his head, stopping all thoughts from escaping but those that he
feared the most. He thought of his wife, and how she had been happy
to be free of him, and of his fathers, and how they had used him,
and of his friends. Had he ever even had any friends? He couldn’t
remember. And even if he had, they hadn’t been real friends. They
had used him, just like everyone else in Alta. That’s all an Artist
was there, someone to be used, and then thrown away.
And it was even worse in Dohm. No-one knew
him, but everyone hated and feared him anyway. He was alone on a
continent where everyone killed, and he himself killed. He laughed
and choked slightly as he drank from his new wineskin, laughed at
the refugees from Rege, fleeing the killer fog. If the fog didn’t
kill them, the church would, and if the church didn’t kill them,
then Dan’r would. They could never escape. No-one could.
The sun rose and fell overhead and Dan’r
walked on without a care in the world, completely oblivious to all
around him. All he knew as he walked was that he hurt. The light of
the sun hurt his eyes. His head hurt, and the alcohol would not
wash away its pain, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how many
drinks he took from the skein in his hand. His memories hurt, and
nothing had ever been able to wash away that pain.
He emptied his last wineskin that night when
he fell on the side of the road and lay there, ignorant and
uncaring of the rocks and dirt that dug into his side. He was out
of wine, and there would be no more. His papers wouldn’t help him,
his Art wouldn’t help him. He cursed at the wine, at himself, and
at the world, mumbling angrily until sleep carried him off to his
dream, and he died once again, just as he had every night for
twenty years.
The next morning when he woke the shaking was
even worse, and he had nothing to stop it with. He cursed at the
world and everything it stood for for the first two hours as he
walked, shaking as he screamed at the top of his lungs, telling the
grass and the sky and the sun of his hatred for them.
Well before noon, without warning, Dan’r’s
stumbling gait halted, and he fell. His knees and face hit the dry
dirt road at the same time, sending small clouds of dust whirling
about him. His hands had been too slow to stop his face from
hitting the ground, and he could feel them shaking just as he felt
blood drip from under his right eyelid and clot quickly in the dirt
below. He sucked in air and sand in equal quantities for a while,
not caring till he started coughing and retching drily on the road.
He wasn’t sure how long it took to pull himself up to his knees,
and then stand, but eventually he was on the road again.
The sun was at its Zenith when he fell for
the second time. He only fell to his knees, saving his face another
gash, but then he collapsed and rolled over onto his back. He was
too hot, his body too parched. It was the cloak’s fault. The cloak
and all the Art it held in its inner pockets. He hated it. Hated
everything he had ever done, hated everyone he knew, just as they
hated him. He unclasped his cloak from his neck and left it there,
lying in the road. He grabbed the paper coins he had left, stuffing
them carelessly into one of his trouser pockets, and then he was
off again, stumbling once more through the hot, dry sun.
He was in front of a small, one street hamlet
when he fell for the third, and last, time.
He had never been inside this hamlet before;
he didn’t even know its name. He did not remember if it had been
there the last time he took the north road from Wraegn. All he knew
now was that there was a hamlet, and the hamlet would have wine and
beer. That, and that it was barricaded.
He was standing in front of the hamlet, his
way blocked by a crude barricade of boxes and barrels. The few
villagers must have banded together and blocked off the roads to
serve as a measure of protection from bandits. Dan’r didn’t care.
He walked slowly towards the barricade, as two youth on the other
side yelled at him.
‘Stay where you are!’ one yelled, his voice
cracking.
‘Walk around!’ the other cried, and even
through his blurred vision Dan’r could see him waving a rifle
awkwardly. ‘Walk around or I’ll shoot!’
Dan’r tried to yell out that he would pay
good money for wine, but the words seemed to get stuck in his
throat. He knew he yelled out something about wine, and getting
into the hamlet, but as he tried to blink through the haze over his
mind, he couldn’t tell exactly what.
He noticed more villagers coming out of
houses, pooling around the barricades, around the two youths with
their rifles, and he thought he could hear them yelling at him, but
he just couldn’t think straight. If he just kept walking towards
them, he was sure he could persuade them he was safe, he could show
them the gold, and they would give him wine and everything would be
alright. Part of him thought that was a stupid idea, but the haze
brushed away his objections, and he stepped forward.