The Fire and the Fog (33 page)

She could try to find someone to marry; she
was old enough, but…no. That wouldn’t work either. Maybe she could
head up to Heyle, live of the land…

It wouldn’t work. None of it would. She had
nowhere to go.

‘We take the cart, fix torches all around it,
and we shouldn’t have a problem riding through the Fog, all the way
to the sea.’

And now they were going to take Marmot? It
just wasn’t fair, at all.

‘We’re going to the sea?’ Gel asked,
excitement clearly palpable in his voice.

‘Yes, and that’s where I need you,’ Dan’r
continued, putting a hand on Gel’s shoulder, ‘We take a boat to
Kol, which has a great lighthouse; it shouldn’t be too hard to
find, but to get there you need to play to the Ocean, to calm it;
make sure no storms come through and wreck us. The storms and the
currents, they’re…well, they’re why our continents don’t know we
each exist. No-one gets across the sea. But you’ll be able to play
them down, and we can cross. We can get back to Alta, stop the
Fog…’ Dan’r stopped, his eyes going distant.

Erris wouldn’t stand for it.

‘I’m coming too,’ she said defiantly,
stepping down from the wagon and drawing herself to her full
height. She would argue if she had to, and wouldn’t back down.

Dan’r looked back at her, ‘I know,’ he said,
as if it had already been decided, and Erris felt the wind of any
anger fall quickly.

And that was it. They rested for a while
longer, but all of them, even Erris, were eager to go on. Within
minutes, they were back on the road, leaving Oortain’s Copse, and
heading towards the Fog.

***

They had been travelling without a care in
the world since the fight with the church soldiers at the village
the day before. They never noticed the Sergeant and two of the
soldiers from that same fight, all relieved of their bright red
coats and dressed in simpler, drabber greens and grays, watching
them, following them, listening to their conversations. They had no
idea that one of the three soldiers was sent to report on the
conversation that had happened at Oortain’s Copse, or that a fourth
one was sent before, to report on the impossible feats the old man
had performed during their fight.

They had no idea that two were still
following them, shadowing their every move from the sides of the
road, following them towards the Fog, and the sea.

***

Erris stayed silent as they continued towards
the Fog, ignoring her books, and losing herself in the endless flow
of questions and comments that came from Gel, and the curt,
single-syllable answers that came from Dan’r.

‘Why didn’t the Watchers stop the Fog?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘What do I have to play?’

‘Just feel it. You’ll know.’

‘What if I don’t do it right?’

‘We die.’

That last chilled Erris, but Gel just
continued with the questions, and Erris stared out blankly at the
rolling fields on either side of the wagon, focusing on nothing;
thinking of nothing.

Dan’r sketched constantly as they rode,
laying parchment piece after parchment piece beside him as he
finished his drawings. Something was wrong with him. It was visible
in his shoulders, and in the terse responses to Gel’s questions,
that he was starting to tire.

And then the wall of Fog was in front of
them, rising high above them, stretching out on either side of the
wagon as far as the eye could see.

‘Hop down, help me get the wagon set.’ Dan’r
told Gel and Erris as the wagon stopped, and they both did as they
were told. There was no more camaraderie, no more awkwardness or
humour in his voice. Just fierce resignation.

For the next hour, Dan’r turned art into
torches, and leather strips to bind the torches to the wagon, with
Gel and Erris to find ways to fasten them to the sides. They fixed
four torches to either side of the wagon, and another two at the
front, close to Marmot. As Gel and Erris fixed the torches, Dan’r
stood in the back of the wagon, breathing more heavily and sweating
more profusely as torch after torch dropped with a dull thud onto
the wooden wagon bed.

‘Have to have…spares…’ he panted between
laboured breaths, one of the times he stopped for a break. He did
not look at either Gel or Erris as he spoke, but seemed to be
talking to himself without knowing.

When the torches were fixed in place all
around the wagon, and Dan’r had rested, he lit a spare torch with a
piece of art from his cloak, albeit with difficulty, and then lit
the torches around the wagon with the spare.

‘Let’s get…a little closer’ he said, walking
to the front of the wagon and grabbing Marmot’s reins.

Gel and Erris followed close behind as the
trio, and Marmot, walked to the Fog bank. As they got closer, they
could make out that it was more than a giant, solid grey wall.
It…billowed, moved in and out on its own, completely independently
of the wind. Erris watched as little tendrils of the fog reached
out towards the tip of each blade of grass, clapped on, and
then…pulled…the rest of the Fog bank after it, sending a ripple of
waves up the length of the wall. It had done the same with the
soldier that had attacked her, she knew, but she quickly pushed
that thought away.

The wall was huge, covering thousands of
leagues, but as scary as it was, it was also…fascinating. It was
like a living thing, slowly creeping forward, slowly covering the
world.

***

Dan’r walked right up to the Fog, the
children and the horse coming along behind him. He was exhausted.
Creating that much Art…It had taken a lot out of him, and even now,
he had to pull down slightly on the reins to keep himself straight.
The lit torch in his right hand felt like it weighed a ton; felt
like he may drop it at any second. But he had to go on. He was so
close. So close.

When he was two meters from the Fog, the
light from the torch hit the wall, and the wall…retreated. It was
like it fell away from the torch, as if the light hurt it. He waved
the torch, and the Fog retreated instantly as the light hit it,
then crept back into place slowly, after the light was gone.

It would work. He’d remembered right, from
the Academy all those years ago. He could get them through the Fog,
to the sea, and they could cross it, and…

Dan’r shook himself, rolled his
shoulders.

‘Get in the wagon,’ he said, hefting the
torch, then lobbing it into the fog. It retreated as the torch
flew, then slowly closed the hole that had been made, ‘It’s time we
were off.’

Gel and Erris climbed into the wagon quickly,
silently, and Dan’r was glad. He had to pull himself onto the wagon
bench, and even that was exhausting. If the boy had continued to
ask questions…

It took Dan’r a few minutes of cajoling and
soothing to get the horse to step forward; it seemed afraid of the
fog, but when it finally stepped up, and the fog retreated in front
of it, it seemed to gain more confidence.

Dan’r looked back at the fields behind them
one last time, looked at the ten torches around the wagon that
would keep the fog at bay, looked at the children in the wagon bed.
With the wall of Fog beside them, the sun overhead seemed weaker,
the world around them less vibrant. It was as if the Fog had stolen
the colour from the world around it. Gel looked a mixture of fear
and excitement; Erris simply looked determined.

Dan’r nodded to the children, in what he
hoped was a reassuring manner, and they nodded back. With that, he
pushed the horse onwards, and the wagon breached the fog.

For a second, the light of day followed them.
Then the fog closed tight the gaping wound that had rent its
surface, and the trio was alone, a tiny island of light and safety
in a giant, incomprehensibly large mass of deadly Fog.

***

Staen finally had news. More subjects were on
their way. The news almost made him forget the disappointments of
the previous days. He had been unable to replicate the results of
that one woman, the one whom the Fog seemed to almost ignore.

But he had not had many women to test with.
He knew that was the key, somehow. When more came, well…

Staen would use them efficiently.

Before the Fog, Staen would have balked at
using women and children for his experiments. Before the Fog he
would have balked at using any humans, really. But then, before the
Fog, Staen had only worked on inventing locomotives.

Nothing he had done before had nearly the
import of what he did now. He would not fail, could not fail, even
if it hurt to continue.

As he wrote of his latest experiments, alone
in his tent, he silently hoped that no-one in the future would read
his notes, would flip through the tear-stained pages.

He silently hoped that there would be a
future.

***

Gel wasn’t sure what to think of this new
world they had entered. First off, it was completely grey. Only the
wagon and its occupants held any colour. Everything else around
them, except for the few meters of ground uncovered by the torches,
everything else was grey. Gel couldn’t think of anything more
mournful, more depressing. The Fog took away…it took away
everything. It was like life and light and colour didn’t exist in
its broad expanse.

‘It’s…it’s kind of scary,’ Erris said,
looking around, and Gel couldn’t help but agree.

He couldn’t help himself. He felt his fingers
itching, begging him to play, and as he picked up his lute, he knew
he had to play something that matched the Fog. It was so
effervescent, so…everywhere.

He began slow, a few minor notes at a time,
letting them ring out into the fog, letting them signify the
ethereal expanse that surrounded them, and then he added small,
short, flat notes, all just almost off key, as the little grasping
arms of the fog that moved it along. He was getting into the song,
getting into the feel of the fog, the feel of everything around
him, when Dan’r yelled out.

‘Gel! Stop, stop playing!’ Gel looked at
Dan’r, not understanding, as Erris jumped at him, and put her hands
over the strings of the lute.

‘Wha…’ he began, then he noticed the Fog.
While he had been playing, it had started reaching for them,
started coming closer.

‘You can’t play for the fog, Gel,’ Dan’r
admonished, fear tingeing his eyes, ‘we’re surrounded by it. Don’t
make it stronger.’

Erris was looking at him as if he were an
idiot, and Gel flushed with embarrassment.

‘If you must play, play something alive,
something colourful. Play something that the fog isn’t,’ Dan’r
said, and that’s what Gel did. As they travelled, he played the
happiest things he could think of. His notes sang of birds flying
through the air on a sunny day, of babbling brooks, and great elms;
of red, and blue, and all the colours of the rainbow. It was hard
to play for beauty when surrounded by its opposite, but still he
played. And as he played, the fog retreated.

Not much, but it did.

***

Erris was relaxing after the scare with Gel’s
music and the fog, sinking herself into a book and the colourful
notes of Gel’s playing, when the wagon jerked to a halt. Dan’r
reached into the back of the wagon, grabbing a torch.

‘Stay in the wagon,’ he said, lighting the
torch he’d grabbed against one of the lit ones on the side of the
wagon, ‘there’s something on the road.’

Erris and Gel leaned over to look as Dan’r
climbed down slowly from the wagon bed, and Erris knew immediately
what it was. A sob, almost a gasp, broke from her chest, a tear
started to roll down her cheek.

‘Erris?’ Gel said, looking over at her,
suddenly concerned, and reaching a questioning hand towards her
shoulder.

‘It’s…it’s my…’ Erris muttered, crying
quietly as Dan’r and Gel both looked at her.

‘It’s my father,’ she said, and then it all
came out. Gel and Dan’r watched her wordlessly as she told the
story; how her family was attacked by church soldiers on her
birthday, her father and brothers killed, the rest of her family
run off into the forest, the soldiers sent after them.

It exhausted her to talk about it. She had
tried to block it out entirely, forget that night had ever
happened, but with Gel and Dan’r standing there, she let it all
out, silent tears falling steadily. Gel looked shocked and sorry;
he kept reaching a hand out as if to comfort her, but then pulling
it back, as if he wasn’t sure how she would take it. Dan’r…Dan’r
looked like a stone, but Erris could see his jaw clenching and
unclenching as he listened.

When Erris talked about the Fog, how she
heard screams from the forest, and how it burst out and engulfed
the soldier who had been assaulting her before Marmot carried her
to safety, Dan’r raised his eyebrows, then cut in.

‘How many of your family ran to the bushes?’
he asked, any traces of exhaustion in his voice hidden by a serious
tone that seemed laden with barely contained anger.

‘What? Why…’ Erris started, looking up with
tear-streaked eyes.

‘Just tell me,’ he said, forcefully, and
Erris did.

She told him all she remembered of where her
family had disappeared, of where the soldiers had gone to find
them, and when she finished he simply nodded once.

‘Stay here. Don’t leave the wagon. And watch
the torches,’ he said, grabbing two extra, unlit torch from the
wagon, lighting a third, and disappearing off into the fog.

Erris had been shocked by his interruption,
shocked by the ferocity in his voice, and she stared off aimlessly
at where he disappeared, eyes wide.

She jumped a little when Gel put a hand on
her shoulder lightly.

‘I’m…I’m sorry,’ he said awkwardly, ‘about
your family.’

It was awkward, but he was sincere, and…