The Fire and the Fog (17 page)

Where were the hues from Alta, the brilliant
greens and whites of Sheith, the red and gold of Char’Nath? True,
outside the cities there were still golden fields, brilliant blue
lakes, and some of the largest mountains he had ever seen, their
snow-capped peaks defying the suns rays by not melting in the
summer heat. Sometimes, sometimes Dohm gave him the urge, the itch,
to sit down and paint, not for money or wine, but just for the
simple joy of painting. Some of the smaller villages, like Feyen or
Drey, or up north in Heyle, some places still had beauty and
spirit, were worth capturing on canvas. But the larger cities of
Dohm were all dull, dead.

Thinking of painting reminded him of why he
started painting in the first place, reminded him of an image that
would be captured forever in his mind. Maeglin, beautiful in a
light blue dress, her hair flowing in the wind, stood atop
Char’Atol’s crenulated red walls, and looked out over a sea of
wheat just as the sun set above her. The sky and the wall were red,
she was blue, the grain was gold, and it was perfect. He had
painted her that night, and then the white towers of Sheith peeking
out through its dark green forests the next morning. And then he
had discovered his Art.

But here, here in the dust and dirt and
depression of the city, here there was nothing, nothing that could
kindle his heart to paint like before. It was enough to lead a man
to drink, Dan’r thought angrily as he drank deeply from his
wineskin.

So deep and involved was his musing, and his
drinking, that he failed to notice the leg that shot out to trip
him from a side alley until he was already falling, face first,
towards the ground.

He landed on his wineskin, hands outstretched
to cushion his fall, and the skin ruptured under his weight,
spraying his arms and face with wash of light pink wine. He cursed
the loss of his wine, mopping his hands futilely over his face as
he lay on his elbows. The wineskin saved his hands from any scrapes
or bruises, but still, he had lost a decent wine.

As he rolled over onto his back and looked
up, he saw five men, all either laughing or grinning menacingly,
step out of a side alley he had not noticed before.

They were large; very large. Muscled and
scarred, they were the kind of men who wouldn’t have looked out of
place at the tavern the night before. And one of them had been. The
first of the men to walk out, likely the one who tripped him, was
the angry, balding man from the night before. The right side of his
face was bruised and cut from where Dan’r had hit him with his mug,
and he was most definitely still angry about it.

The men behind him were less angry and more
anticipatory as they stood behind the angry one, grinning or
laughing at Dan’r. One right behind the balding man was cracking
his knuckles forcefully, while two others were drawing knives from
under their clothes, and the last was wrapping a short length of
chain around his fist.

Dan’r knew the men were out to kill, or at
least seriously maim, as the balding one spoke.

‘You cost me a lota money las night, ass’ he
spat as he reached down and grabbed Dan’r’s shirt in two large,
worn and scarred hands. The spit was warm as it hit Dan’r in the
face, just under his eye. ‘An I don’t like people what lose me
money, even less than I don’t like people what hit me.’

He tried to lift Dan’r to his feet, and Dan’r
used the lift to stand, not fighting against the man. He would need
to be mobile for what was going to come next anyway.

‘You ruined a perfectly good wineskin’ he
said, looking pointedly at his arms, the cloth on them dark,
clinging and dripping in the alleys half-light. He was lucky none
of the wine had gotten inside his cloak.

‘What use does a dead man have for wine?’ the
angry man asked as he let go of Dan’r with one hand, and reached
behind his back. There he would have a knife, or a mace, or
something else that would likely ruin Dan’r’s day, at the
least.

Dan’r had his hands inside his cloak, palming
a piece of paper in each, as the other street toughs began to
circle him. ‘What does a dead man care for money?’ he said calmly,
quietly, as he brought one hand up, palm out, to the angry man’s
chest.

The angry one, his left eye still slightly
swollen, his breath bad, looked up at Dan’r, and down at his
stomach, quickly in confusion and surprise, and then Dan’r pushed.
He pushed with his body, and his mind, and the paper in his palm
pushed as well. And it pushed hard.

There was no sound as Dan’r pushed, only the
almost imperceptible afterimage of a gust of wind, but the man flew
back a good ten paces through the air. He tumbled head over heels
backwards when he landed, rolling and skidding till he crashed into
a pile of boxes and refuse piled on the side of the alley. Between
his landing and his companions’ loud, surprised curses, the alley
was anything but quiet, even though Dan’r’s push had been. All of
Dan’r’s Art was silent. You couldn’t make sound with a painting,
just as you couldn’t make an image through sound.

Dan’r flew backwards as well though. The
effects of a push would affect the user as well as whatever it was
used on, but he was prepared. He had braced himself before pushing,
and although he skidded as he landed, he kept his feet set wide,
and came to a stop a few paces back from where he started.

He was no longer surrounded by the thugs, and
he almost pitied their surprised, confused looks as they glanced
from Dan’r to their leader and back. The angry one was groggily
trying to escape from the pile he had landed in, muttering
nonsensically as he lay thrashing in his bed of dung and rotting
food.

Dan’r almost pitied them. Almost. But they
had attacked him, would have killed him, and they had likely done
the same to others. It was unfortunate, it was something Dan’r
hated to do, but he would not let them hurt anyone else, he thought
as he dipped his right hand back into his cloak for another slip of
paper and threw out his left towards the nearest thug.

The large man, the one who had been cracking
his knuckles and grinning stupidly, was struck high in the right
side of his chest by a large ball of reddish-green fire. The fire
bit into him, and his flesh popped and crackled as it burnt, but
the flame itself made no noise as it sprayed outwards from where it
hit. The thug screamed as he fell, writhing, to the floor, his left
hand grasping futilely at the large portion of his upper chest that
was now missing. His fingers scrabbled through charred flesh and
blackened bone, and his screams of pain turned to rasps and gurgles
as blood began to pool at his lips.

Dan’r felt bad as he threw out his right hand
again, this time towards the man who had been wrapping the chain
around his fist. He was reaching back into his cloak with his left
hand as he did so, but he still felt sorry for them. They were tiny
and useless, powerless in their cruelty. He knew that they were
cruel, and preyed on the weak, but he had already done more than he
wanted to them. He had meant to hit the man further off to the
side, in the shoulder. Enough to injure, but not kill him. But the
alcohol got in the way. It usually did these days. He had to
remember to drink less if he was going to fight, he thought, as the
man with the chain’s left leg and lower torso covered over in
frost. The man yelled as he grabbed his leg in both hands. ‘He
shouldn’t have done that,’ Dan’r thought as he reached back into
his cloak, and the man’s leg began to freeze. If he held on too
long, the man’s fingers would freeze to his leg, and he would lose
those as well.

There was no middle ground, Dan’r thought as
the man’s leg began to crack and fissure under the strain of his
weight. If he went unarmed, or used a sword, he would lose. If he
used his Art, he would win. Why couldn’t a fight be fair, Dan’r
wondered as he threw out his left hand towards the remaining two
men, who were both turning to run, and the frozen man’s leg
shattered underneath him. Dan’r hoped the cold had at least dulled
the man’s pain as energy sparked silently at his fingertips. The
man was falling to the ground and screaming, clutching at the stump
where his leg and lower pelvis used to be, as lightning arced
through the air from Dan’r’s hands, the loud crack of thunder
shattered through the tiny alley.

The last two thugs fell to the ground,
smoking and twitching as the lightning coursed through them. Dan’r
had to blink several times before the slash of blue across his
vision faded away. He always loved trying to paint lightning. It
was such a brilliant, startling blue.

Dan’r casually flicked out his right hand one
last time and a large, cruelly hooked knife appeared in his hand as
he walked slowly towards the angry balding man. The man still lay
gasping where Dan’r had Pushed him, and he was looking in shock at
his dead and dying companions. He started to whimper, clearly
trying to speak, but unable to do so in his fright as Dan’r walked
slowly closer.

‘So, friend, what have we learned today?’
Dan’r asked, fingering one of the knives’ hooks as he stood over
the man. Dan’r could smell the sharp tang of urine mixing with the
rot of garbage as he reached the man and pushed the knife point
against his stomach.

‘This is one of my favourite knives, friend.
It won’t hurt much going in, but it’ll pull out all sorts of
interesting things coming out. Don’t make me show you how to use
it’ Dan’r said, slowly pushing it into the man’s belly. The man’s
stomach distended under the knife, then popped back as the knife
tip broke skin, and drew blood.

The man shook and cried, babbling
incoherently as Dan’r pulled out the knife tip and knelt, resting
his knife-arm on his knee and waving it absently towards the
prostrate thug.

‘You hurt anyone else, and I’ll have to come
back after you’ he threatened, tilting his head to the side and
opening his eyes wide, looking as crazed as he could as he stared
into the man’s eyes.

He was good at looking crazed, he had found.
Between his sunken eyes, ringed from lack of sleep, his messy
beard, and the look of pain and loss that constantly lived in his
eyes, he could certainly manage crazy. Of course, being able to
throw fire and lightning certainly helped the image.

He stuck the knife into the pile beside the
man, then stood as he caught the jingle and shouts of approaching
church guards. There had been too much noise, between the screams
and the thunder. Not that it was surprising, he frequently got
carried away. One day he would learn to keep quiet, he swore
absently. His cloak billowed as he turned and ran down the alley,
deeper into the safety, the anonymity of its mazelike confines.

Only one of the thugs would die, he hoped.
The frozen one should only lose a leg, and the other two were
hopefully just unconscious. The one he had used the knife on was no
more than scared. He turned another corner in the alley as he
considered. He would have to leave the city now, there was nothing
for it. He was almost out of places to stay, and now he had badly
injured four men. And they knew what he looked like. The church
guards would surely try to find him.

He would buy some more painting supplies,
then leave, Dan’r decided, and he pulled another wineskin from his
cloak and drank as he ran.

II

He would have to leave the city, Dan’r knew
as he sat quietly on the side of the street several hours later,
slowly nursing yet another wineskin. Even through the constant fog
in his mind, Dan’r accepted that murdering one man, and severely
wounding four more alone would catch the notice of the church
guards. Doing so with an Art, something that seemed to not exist in
poor, drab,
colourless
Dohm, well, that
tended to set the church on even more of an edge than common
murders.

In this case, the attention and anger of the
church meant increased guard patrols, and each of the guards had
probably been given some sort of description of Dan’r. He had
already spent the morning dodging guards, and it would only get
harder as the citizens of Wraegn found out about him, and about the
murder. Someday he would learn to kill people right out, Dan’r
thought, that way no descriptions could be given. He sometimes
wished he had a Musician, or even a Writer with him, but then,
Artists were rare even in Alta. He had never heard even the vaguest
tales of one in Dohm.

Dan’r’s thoughts jumped and skipped as he sat
and drank. The guards were certainly a problem he thought, watching
with half-lidded eyes as three well dressed women walked by. They
were haughty, officious, and their necklines were high, but the
colours of their dresses were nice, and the dresses themselves well
fitted. An age ago he would have offered to paint them. The three
of them, a redhead, blonde, and brunette, all in one painting, they
would be gorgeous, if he could get the lighting and paints right.
Which he could.

That thought belonged in another age though,
Dan’r remembered as the three pretty women disappeared into the
throng of people that crowded the street, and Dan’r was brought
back to the present again. The guards were after him. And worse
than the guards, he had well and truly started to run out of
taverns to visit. The Old Goat, the Broken Rudder, the other few
taverns worth their coin in Wraegn, he could not easily drink at
any of them again, and that scared him more than any number of
church guards could. No taverns to drink at meant no taverns to
fight at, and that meant it was time to move on, as it had for
longer than Dan’r cared to remember.

He wondered how the thugs he had beaten
earlier had described him as he lowered his hooded head, glancing
with the tops of his eyes as a group of heavily plated church
soldiers trotted by, their shining armour and heavy footfalls
creating a rhythmic jingling drum beat as they passed. The soldiers
were wearing bits of segmented plate-mail over red coats, the
silvery metal over their thighs, stomachs, shoulders, and heads
fitting perfectly on top of their bright red uniform. The soldier
in the front even had a bright red plume on the crest of his
helmet. He hated to admit it, but they were certainly a sight to
see. He could picture them in a wheat field, the red and silver of
their uniforms surrounded by golden grain, all shining brightly in
the sun. He would paint them, standing tall, officious, seemingly
invincible in their burnished armour, mighty and proud. Or maybe he
would paint them beside a deep blue lake, a deep orange sun setting
behind them as they charged an unseen enemy, their faces filled
with anger, fury, fear. He could see himself painting each of them,
stark and sharp, fully in focus in the center of the piece.