He put down the charcoal as he finished
speaking.
‘Right, this is the last one for the night,
so watch closely,’ he said, holding the parchment out then
crumpling it between his hands.
Once again, the air in front of him
shimmered, wavered and then…and then he was holding a lute. Erris
couldn’t even tell when it appeared, it was just…there.
‘Here, kid,’ the old man said, his words
tired as he handed the lute to the boy.
Gel took the lute with visible pleasure, sat,
and began to play with the pegs, tuning the lute slowly, expertly,
by ear. When he seemed done, be closed his eyes, breathed in deep,
lifted his hand to begin to play, and stopped.
He opened his eyes, looked at Erris.
‘What do you want me to play about?’ he
asked, his eyes wide and staring. Erris thought she saw Dan’r smile
on the other side of the fire.
Erris stared back at Gel, but didn’t take
long to think. His eyes were so blue…
Looking up, she gestured with one hand.
‘That,’ she said, looking back at the
boy.
He looked up, took in the battle taking place
in the night sky in all its glory. Then he nodded, looked back
down, and began to play.
Erris had wondered at first. Dan’r and Gel
had said he could play, but it was just music. She knew of church
hymns, and she had once seen a parade, all drums and trumpets, loud
and bleating.
She had thought nothing could make the
silence, the introspection that she had found earlier while curled
in her shift, any better. But then the boy started to play.
In the sky, the night fought a winning battle
against the last, retreating remnants of daylight; a vast, sweeping
blue wave slowly beating back and covering an ever shrinking, ever
darkening orange beach.
In front of her, the camp’s small fire fought
the same battle; a lone spot of light in an ever darkening
landscape.
And when the music started, she could hear it
as well. She could hear the quick, bright tenor notes fighting
against a calm, slow, unstoppable bass, as unstoppable and
unyielding as the night. She could feel as the bright, fiery beach
of orange, those quick, high notes, the last resistance of the day,
slowly darkened, deepened, faded into the low drone of the
night.
And she thought the boy was done, and she was
astounded. She had never before heard something so…so complex, so
beautiful.
And then he made the stars come out.
She wanted to ask Dan’r more questions; a
thousand of them had been living, growing in her head. But as Gel
played, they all disappeared. None of them mattered.
The sky darkened as Gel played, and Erris
couldn’t say when she fell asleep.
The march was exhausting, and Othwaithe was
tired. Tired, and in pain. His feet dragged with every step, his
large frame was hunched over. He kept wanting to stop on the side,
to lie down, to sleep, anything but keep walking.
‘I can’t’ he told himself as he shook his
head, straightened his back. He was at the front, and he had to
walk tall. He was still the Mayor, and he still had a town to lead.
What was left of a town anyway.
He looked back over his shoulder, past Maerge
who walked with dead eyes. The loss of Gel was hard for both of
them, and she still grieved. Othwaithe had not yet had time.
The villagers trailed behind, ragged and
exhausted, dirty and unfed. But they still followed, most of them.
The ring of Church soldiers, pristine in their red coats,
threatening with their wooden muskets, Fulhar Chaeveh at their
head, the ring of soldiers kept the villagers moving, kept them
walking south along the dirt road.
Othwaithe still wondered why that night had
happened as he looked quickly over the villagers, doing as much of
a head count as he could. Sheane and Mae were shuffling along
behind Maerge, arm in arm. He would have to adopt them, after their
parents… He and Maerge had always hoped one of the twins would join
their family, now, with Gel gone… Othwaithe hoped the two of them
could help give Maerge some solace.
They were all still there; everyone who had
made it out of the village alive. Satisfied, Othwaithe turned his
eyes forward, his frame beginning to stoop as he remembered once
more.
***
‘We will have to move the village soon,
Maerge’ he said quietly as he and his wife sat together at the
large wooden dinner table. ‘The Fog is coming, and we are running
out of time. But where do we go?’ He had his head in one hand, a
glass of strong drink on the other, and his wife’s hands on his
back as she tried to console him, to comfort him.
‘The Church will come for us soon, and we
will go with them.’ Maerge had said. ‘They will come for us, and
they will protect us.’
It made Othwaithe want to laugh, now.
He was lifting his glass to his lips when the
first hit to the door sounded. Louder, heavier than a knock, he was
standing and pushing back the chair when the second hit sounded. He
could hear splintering, muffled shouts from beyond the door.
He was pushing Maerge behind him, stepping
forward to the door when the third and final hit sounded. The door
splintered, tore away and fell violently inward, hanging on by one
hinge. Bits of wood flew towards Othwaithe, and he raised one arm
quickly against them.
And then there were Church soldiers with
clubs and swords pouring through the door, and Maerge screamed.
Othwaithe charged wordlessly, knocked one
soldier backwards, took an angry sidewise swipe with his right arm
at another, and then he was being clubbed to the floor, kicked, as
Maerge’s screams were muffled behind him.
***
He had tried to struggle, but there had been
too many soldiers for him. They had pulled him out of his house,
forced him down the hill to the square, where they were slowly
collecting the surviving village members. They eventually brought
Maerge down as well. They left Gel.
The Fulhar, their spiritual leader for years,
was given command of the soldiers, and their long, arduous march
began. They still would not tell Othwaithe where they were being
taken, but he would do his best, he would be strong for his
village.
He was still Mayor.
***
Ragn spoke to the Meiter in his dreams. Robed
and resplendent in flame, shining like the light of a thousand
suns, Ragn looked down on him.
‘You are doing well, my son,’ his God told
him.
And the Meiter was pleased.
‘Control them all,’ Ragn’s booming voice
shook the heavens, ‘Rule them all,’ Ragn’s fiery arms raised
towards the black night sky, set it afire, ‘Use them all,’ Ragn
said, and His fiery eyes looked deep into the Meiter, burnt him
from the inside out. He felt himself disintegrate, and be made anew
by Ragn’s will.
‘Yes, my God.’ He wanted to say, but he had
no voice.
‘Bring them together,’ Ragn said, as he
reached out over Dohm, as he set the hills and the valleys, the
fields and the lakes aflame. ‘Bring them together, and your path
shall reveal itself,’ and Ragn’s fire reached across the ocean, set
the whole earth on fire.
‘Do this for me, my son,’ Ragn’s voice
boomed, loud and soft at the same time, ‘Do this for me and you
shall be set above all others.’
And the Meiter was pleased.
II
The next morning dawned late, as if the sky
above was still fighting itself, and Erris woke late. Dan’r and Gel
were already up, taking down what little camp they had made. She
unraveled herself from Gel’s jacket and handed it back with a
quickly muttered thanks before being handed a plate of breakfast by
Dan’r. She ate, washed quickly with some of the water Dan’r had
conjured out of thin air, and then the three were off on the road.
The three spoke little that morning as they travelled; Gel and
Erris sat in the wagon bed, Gel playing idly with his lute, and
Erris reading from her diminishing stack of books. Dan’r sat on the
bench at the front, cursing under his breath each time the wagon
shook or bumped, jostling his hand as he sketched rapidly. The
morning seemed tense, anticipatory, as if it were waiting for
something to explode. It felt nothing like the calm peace that the
night before had offered.
Erris and Gel spent most of the morning
avoiding looking at each other, or at least avoiding being seen to
do so. Erris kept wondering what he would have looked like without
the scar; how he’d gotten it, and how he could play so well without
all his fingers. Her glances between sentences of her book kept
distracting her, and she found herself having to re-read portions
of her book, found herself going entire pages without actually
taking in a single word. It had never happened to her before.
Gel, on the other hand, kept glancing at her
because, well, pretty girls frequently have that effect. He kept
trying to figure out why she was pretty; she didn’t look quite like
Sheane or Mae had; she looked almost boyish, staring so intently at
her books. But then she’d brush aside a strand of hair that had
fallen in front of her eyes, and Gel would forget his complaints,
would forget that she was tall, or thin, or that she had red hair,
rather than soft blonde.
It almost became a battle between the two, to
look so absorbed in their thoughts and then look up, to try to
catch the other staring. Gel kept losing at the game, though he
couldn’t quite tell why.
Around midday, when the sun sat directly
overhead, when its heat beat down the hardest, as if it was trying
to set the world on fire with nothing but its baleful glare, they
stopped. Dan’r handed around some food, and they ate in silence
while Marmot grazed, freed from the harness for a time.
Then, fed, watered, and lightly rested, they
set off once more.
A few hours later, the sun still high
overhead, the sound of Marmot’s hooves hitting the ground changed
once more to claps of steel-shod hooves on cobblestone, and Erris
and Gel looked up quickly, eager for something new to distract them
from their awkward, yet irresistible, game.
To Gel, the houses rising in the distance
looked vaguely familiar. To Erris…
‘This is…,’ she said, looking sharply at
Dan’r, who still sat on the wagon bench, one knee up, his pad of
parchment propped against it, ‘Where are you taking us?’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, not looking up from
his drawing, ‘We’re just passing through.’
‘That doesn’t matter! This is Oortain’s
Copse, isn’t it? Why are we here? It was evacuated because of the
fog, and now you’re bringing me, us, back? Why?’ It was as if a day
without conversation had unleashed a flood of questions.
Gel stayed silent as Dan’r looked up, frowned
at Erris’ outburst, then shrugged.
‘We’ll stop in town,’ he said, putting down
the parchment he had been working on, ‘I guess I should explain my
plan anyway. And then you can decide if you want to come or
not.’
Erris looked around anxiously as they
trundled through the houses on either side, shuttered and
abandoned, wondering if the fog would come spilling over the
houses, crashing like a wave with no warning over them.
But it didn’t. Dan’r stopped the wagon in the
center of town, and Erris looked over the deserted streets, her
eyes lingering on the bookstore she had loved so much.
‘I think I know what the Fog is,’ Dan’r said,
jumping down from the wagon and looking up the street, tapping one
foot impatiently while he searched for the words to explain
himself. Even as the leader of their ragtag company, he seemed
awkward, seemed to never know quite what to say, or how to say it.
‘I think, no, I know how to stop it. But I need Gel’s help to do
it.’
‘And me?’ Erris said from the wagon as Dan’r
turned and looked in its direction; Erris and Gel leaned over the
edge of the wagon to watch Dan’r.
‘You’re an extra,’ he said, his face
impassive, ‘you can come if you want, but I don’t need you.’
Erris was crestfallen. She had no-one,
belonged nowhere, and now the only person she even kind of knew
told her she meant nothing. She stared blankly at the distance as
Gel started asking questions. She should have been angry, but…he
was right. She was useless.
‘Where are we going? And why do you need me
with you? And how do we stop the fog?’ Gel’s questions tumbled out
of his mouth, unleashed from the same dam of silence that had held
Erris’ questions stoppered up.
‘Slow down boy, I’ll explain,’
It wasn’t fair. The old man and the boy had
magical powers, and she had nothing.
Gel jumped off the wagon and moved closer to
the old man as the two kept talking.
‘The Fog is…well, it’s what happens when
someone tries to do something that’s not allowed.’
‘What do you mean not allowed?’ Gel asked,
interrupting.
She was going to be left alone again. Maybe
she could walk to Wraegn, and try to live in the city, but…she knew
nothing about the city. She had no money, no place to go…
‘Don’t interrupt, let me talk,’ Dan’r
continued. ‘The Fog, it’s what those Watchers I told you about are
supposed to stop. One of the things they’re supposed to stop, I
suppose. I don’t know why they didn’t, but…if we go through the
Fog, and find where it’s coming from, then we can stop it.’
‘I thought the Fog ate everyone that touched
it?’
Erris couldn’t go to the city, she knew that.
She’d never survive. Maybe she could find a farmer somewhere
willing to take her in? She was good at working.
‘It does, but if we surround ourselves with
light, with fire, we should be able to keep it away from us. We
can’t stop it that way, we’d never be able to get enough torches,
put them out on that large a scale, but…well, we should be able to
keep the Fog far enough away from us on all sides to get through
it.