The other three subjects were covered in all
the religious tokens he had been able to find. One knelt on the
ground, head in his hands, crying. They cried as often as they
struggled. Another was struggling, trying to tear off the tokens
that were tied to his body. That might prove a problem. The Fog was
too close to send a soldier in to discipline him. They would have
to tie the subjects’ arms next time.
The last test subject was on his feet,
yelling and screaming at Staen and the soldiers, straining against
his chain to get as far away from the Fog as possible. He was
yelling something about Staen’s mother now. This happened often
too. Staen ignored the man’s ranting as usual.
Staen watched, and hoped, as the fog inched
ever closer. It reached the rightmost man first, the one who had
been kneeling and crying. Staen rose up slightly in his chair; his
desk and chair had been placed at a suitable vantage point, and now
he held himself tensed for that first moment when the Fog touched a
new victim. The Fog was touching a man covered in holy symbols of
Ragn for the first time…the reaction could solve everything.
Staen could see the tendrils eke forward as
they always did when approaching a living person. They touched the
man’s shoulder first, and he jolted up, his sobbing cries replaced
by screams of fear. He started to flail, tried to shake the Fog
from his arm. It clung, thin wisps that had reached from the main
bank of Fog growing steadily thicker as the bank moved closer to
the screaming man.
It was interesting. When his experiments had
begun, the soldiers under him had grimaced, or turned away. Some
had even vomited, watching the Fog reach the test subjects. Now
though, now they stared ahead, emotionless. That too begged more
study. He would have to make a note of it. What would it take to
desensitize someone? And what could they be desensitized to?
Violence surely, or at least watching it…but…committing violence?
Could they be desensitized to food? To sex? Something else to
study, after the Fog. If there was an after.
The other subjects looked at the doomed man,
tied to his post and slowly being consumed. They became more
frenzied in their cries, in their attempts to break free. But the
one touched just continued to scream. The Fog flowed over his holy
symbols as it did over, well, anything else. And then a tendril
reached into his mouth, then flowed quickly into the man, almost as
if it were filling him. Then the main Fog bank…bulged, and
surrounded the man. His screams cut off completely.
It was what always happened. Every time. The
Fog never changed, never took people differently. It touched them,
crept over them, entered them, and then the wall would bulge
forward, sit still a moment, then start forward again.
The holy symbols had done nothing.
Staen scribbled furiously, noting his
observations, even though they were the same as the observations
that filled a full fifty notebooks back in his wagon.
The other men went the same way, screaming as
the Fog overtook them. They fought, or yelled, or struggled. Even
the subject that had been yelling so vehemently about Staen’s
mother glared till the end. He quit yelling when he realized his
fate was sealed, but he stood, staring back towards Staen and the
soldiers, one lip curled, anger and disgust clear on his face.
Staen was sure the man would have tried to rip the soldiers apart
with his own hands if could have reached them.
‘Not that he will now, with the Fog wrapping
over him’ Staen thought to himself slowly, almost smugly. There was
no joy in watching his subjects used, no, but maybe there was some
measure of satisfaction.
Still, nothing had changed, this time or any
other. The symbols of Ragn hadn’t helped. Staen started to order
his desk packed up; they would have to move back further, prepare
the cauldrons for the second round of tests for the day. Hopefully
the heat would do something. He was running out of options as
quickly as he was running out of test subjects.
Only a lucky, half-hearted glance back at the
naked woman saved his day’s experimentation; saved even more
possibly. She was still sitting there, almost as if she were
waiting for the Fog. No tears, no screams, she didn’t even yank at
her chain, or move to the end of it to get away. It was like she
didn’t care. And the Fog…it seemed almost as if it didn’t care
either. In every other subject Staen had observed, the Fog would
reach tendrils towards, grab them, cover them, and then…bulge out
towards them. But the woman…
She simply sat there. And the Fog bank rolled
over her. It didn’t cling to her, didn’t flow into her mouth,
didn’t bulge out when it reached her.
And now Staen had no idea why. Something
about her had been different. She could even still be alive in
there. He had no way of knowing. But she was the control, so it
couldn’t have been the religious objects.
It wasn’t simply that she was a woman…he had
gone through women subjects before, as rare as they were; they had
the same, the normal, reactions. What could be different? He wished
he could pull subjects out of the Fog, but it had never worked
before. He would have to have them all roped though, tied to horses
just in case. Could he have pulled the woman out if he’d been
prepared?
Could she have been with child? Would that
matter? He scribbled furiously. He would have to interrogate the
soldiers back at the camp. Maybe they had done things to her
before? It seemed likely. He would find out everything he could
about the woman. He would find a way to save all of Rognia.
For now though, he still had experiments to
conduct.
‘Move the camp back a hundred feet, and get
fires under those cauldrons. Once they’ve boiled, put out the
fires. We need to see if heat will stop the Fog.’ Staen said calmly
as he stood and picked up his notebooks; the soldiers would move
his desk further back. One always had to have a solid desk for good
note-taking.
‘And don’t forget to throw the last subject
into one of the cauldrons.’ He said, remembering. One always needed
a good control for experiments.
Staen hummed lightly, tunelessly to himself
as he walked towards what would be the second staging point,
wondering why the woman had been different; why she hadn’t
struggled.
***
Bit was angry. Furious, even. His face was
probably the same shade of red as his robes. Furious.
For the moment though, as he marched through
the streets of Wraegn, he didn’t care. Sure, the people in the
streets stared at the big priest, clearly fuming intensely behind
his red cheeks, but his mind was more occupied in his long strides,
and in replaying the conversation he had just had, than in any care
for the people around him.
‘We need to talk’ Bit had said under his
breath as his Alde passed him in the corridor. ‘Now’.
Hil, his Alde, had looked at him out of the
side of his eyes, his head bowed and his hands clasped together in
front of his chest, hidden by the long sleeves of his robes. Hil
had nodded, and Bit had fallen into step behind him, following him
all the way to his office chamber.
The Alde sat as Bit closed the door behind
them, and turned to face his superior.
‘Yes, Bit? Of what do you wish to speak?’ He
leaned back in his chair. The man was slim, gaunt; seemed dwarfed
by his robes. He disappeared in them.
‘Alde,’ Bit started. He had spent an hour
that morning thinking of what to say, and now he had nothing.
‘Something is wrong with the Army.’
‘Explain yourself, Bit.’
‘I’ve been hearing disturbing reports, Hil.
Refugees being mistreated, being left behind or killed when they
couldn’t keep up with the rest of a caravan. And Ragn knows, the
conditions in the camp outside the city are already bad enough. No
food, no order.’ Bit paused. Hil watched him silently, his fingers
steepled on the desk.
‘Worse still, I’ve had reports of villagers
being forced out of their homes by soldiers. Even rumours of
farmhouses being burned down in order to force the farmers to
leave.’
‘Bit, where have you been hearing this from?’
the Alde asked, his voice free from inflection.
‘From people I trust, Hil. What’s going on.
Tell me, please.’
The Alde stared at Bit for a second,
weighing, judging maybe? Then he sighed, and looked down at his
hands still steepled on the desk.
‘Bit, you’re a good man. A good priest.’
Bit said nothing.
‘I’m going to ask you as a mentor, as a
friend, to ignore this. Let these reports go. They’re not
true.’
‘Hil, …’ Bit started, but was cut off as Hil
looked up at him angrily.
‘As your superior, Rilden, I order you to
ignore this.’ Bit noticed the change, from using his name to using
his title. The conversation wasn’t going where he wanted, and now
his Alde was getting angry.
‘What do you mean ignore this? If our people
are dying it is our duty to protect them!’
‘Bit…’
He was yelling, he knew. But he didn’t really
care. His temper was always a bit of a problem.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Hil, but
I will not stand by and let this happen. I will not let my people
die.’
Maybe not using his Alde’s title had been a
bad idea. Or maybe it was the yelling. He yelled too much, at
times. Eventually his Alde had kicked him out. Bit was still
furious, still had no answers, and now had no-where to go.
He stalked through the crowded streets of
Wraegn, his red robes and red face affording some space, but still,
the streets were tight. They had not been built with so many people
in mind; so many refugees.
What would he do next? Collect evidence and
seek an audience with the Meiter? Even if he could gain an
audience…if the Alde knew what was happening, then surely the
Meiter did as well. The orders would likely have come from him.
But where else could he go?
Bit was no closer to deciding his next move
when he felt a sharp pain in his side. Then another, and another.
He looked quickly, but saw nothing but the crowd moving past
him.
His hand pressed to his side came away red.
He stared at his hand a moment, confused. He’d been…stabbed?
His knees buckled before he could sort his
thoughts out.
People passing him in the street stopped,
stared. One came over to help him, wondering why the large priest
was on his knees.
Then Bit pitched forward, fell face-first
into the cobblestone road. The last thing he heard was a voice
yelling for the guard.
III
They hadn’t walked long before Gel started
wondering once more why he was following the old man. Dan’r, or
whatever his name was. True, that big of magic had been amazing,
but…there had to be another explanation. He must have had the lute
hidden…somewhere…and then pulled it out. There was always an
explanation. Magic only existed in stories.
Gel remembered seeing a bard once, remembered
how he had juggled and pulled flowers out of nowhere. He had
thought that magic. Only later was he told that the flowers were
hidden in the bard’s sleeves. There had to be an explanation for
what the man had done.
They walked in silence for a good five
minutes, maybe more. Gel thought he’d start by asking the man where
he’d come from, or maybe what he was doing in Oortain’s Copse. Or
what had happened that night. Or maybe where the lute had come
from. He was just about to open his mouth, to blurt out whichever
question came first, when the man spoke.
‘So. Gel, right?’ Gel nodded.
‘Where were you headed?’
Gel was going…he was going to…’I was going to
find them’ he muttered. He still was going to.
‘Them? You mean whoever did, ah, that?’ Dan’r
said, nodding his head back towards the village, now out of sight
but for the light wisps of smoke that told that parts of the
village still smoldered. Gel nodded again.
‘Well, I hate to say it ki…ah…Gel. You’re
going the wrong direction.’
‘What do you mean?’ Gel stopped walking,
looked up at Dan’r. He hadn’t realized before how tall the man
was.
‘I mean we’re going East. They went South.
Probably towards Wraegn. If you’re trying to find them, you’re
going the wrong way.’
Gel felt himself getting angry again, and
suspicious. ‘How do you know?’
‘I know a lot more than I let on, kid.’ The
man said, and Gel felt himself prickle. Then the man turned, faced
him.
‘Fine. Look Gel, I wasn’t there. Whatever
happened, I wasn’t a part of it.’ Gel thought he sounded honest,
again, but…
‘Then how do you know…’ the man held up a
hand, interrupting Gel.
‘Like I said, Gel, I know more than I let on.
I notice things. If you tell me what you know, then I can probably
help you piece together what happened.’
‘What I know? What’s it matter. They went
south. We can’t catch them now.’
‘Gel, trust me. I know where they went. I
also think I know who they are. Just tell me what happened.’
‘What happened? They killed everyone, that’s
what happened!’
‘They didn’t, Gel. There weren’t enough
bodies. Most of your village was taken, not killed.’
‘Taken…they’re…they’re not dead?’
‘Not yet anyway. Now, Gel, what
happened.’
Gel stood for a minute. Then another. What
the old man said almost made sense, he thought. He had seen his
teacher dead, and…Del, the baker, and Daeny, and…and who else?
He couldn’t remember. He had seen at least a
dozen bodies, but…that was so few. And where were his parents,
and…
‘If they’re not dead…’
‘Gel…’ the old man prodded him again; trying
to get him to tell his story. But it hurt, didn’t it? Thinking
about it?
‘I woke up,’ Gel started, ‘I woke up and
everything outside was on fire. And all I could hear were screams
and yells.