The Fire and the Fog (4 page)

‘Very nice dear, I’m sure they’ll love
it.  Have you decided which of the girls you will ask to the
festival?’ his mother asked again as she began to clear the
table.  Gel’s father had already left the table, and was
heading to his study as he did every evening.  Othwaithe
always said after dinner was the best time for paperwork, though it
was understood that he spent more time napping than working. 
Gel, on the other hand, sat and stared at his stew for a few
moments, pre-occupied with poking at a small chunk of
carrot. 

‘I,’ he started, frowning deeply in thought,
‘well, I haven’t decided yet.’  He looked up over his bowl,
and gave a wry smile, ‘Can’t I just take them both?’ he asked,
still poking desultorily at his stew, all evidence of hunger
banished by his new train of thought.

His mother laughed as she cleared away the
remnants of dinner, her laugh a silver peal of light in the
encroaching dusk.  And Gel sat and thought, and the evening
ground on.

***

Later that night, after dinner had been
cleared away and homework had been done, after Gel had played his
new song for his parents, his father looking over ledgers, his
mother knitting another pair of too-small socks; after washing and
bathing for the night, Gel lay deep inside his small bed, covered
in hills of covers and quilts, surrounded by mountains of
pillows.  Gel had always found it comforting to be weighed
down while he slept, but at the moment his mother and her stories
were all the comfort he needed. 

She sat, perched on the edge of the bed,
waiting for Gel to decide what story he wanted that night. 
For Gel it always seemed that no matter how many books he read, no
matter how many stories of knights and magic, of powerful swords
and secret rings, of damsels in distress, his mother’s bedtime
stories were by far the best.

Every night, after Gel had washed, and
cleaned his room, and finished his lessons, and lay curled up, safe
and warm in bed, his mother would walk in, sit beside him, and wait
for him to tell her what story he wanted to hear.

Gel lay in his fortress of blankets
thinking.  Running over all of his favourite stories, over all
the stories his mother told best, until at last he decided.

‘I want to hear about the princess and the
mirror’ Gel said, snuggling further into his covers and closing his
eyes, waiting for his mother to begin.  Maybe he was getting
too old for these stories; certainly the other kids in the village
had stopped hearing bedtime stories years ago.  But he didn’t
care.  The stories were comforting, and his mother seemed just
as happy to tell them as he was to listen.

She smiled first, bending over to kiss his
forehead and run her hands through his light blonde hair. 
‘Very well, little one’ she said softly, and Gel felt safe.

‘Not too long ago, and not so very far away,
there lived a princess in a castle’ Maerge began, only to be
swiftly interrupted by Gel.

‘Was she pretty?’ Gel asked his eyes now open
and questioning.

‘Of course she was,’ his mother replied,
reaching over to stroke his hair again, ‘now shush’.

‘It was a lovely castle, and its king, the
princess’s father, ruled over many happy subjects.  The
princess lived in the castle with her sisters, and she had many
friends among the servants and the townspeople, but she would often
go off on her own to explore. 

It was not that she had no love for her
family or friends, it was just that the old castle was so large, so
empty, that it seemed lonely.  The princess hated to see
people sad and lonely, so she would often go and explore the large
castle, to make it feel happy, and lived in.

So, when the princess was not riding in the
country with her friends, or learning to be a princess with her
sisters, she would wander the castle, finding new rooms, new
places; old places. 

And so it was that one day, as she turned the
corner in an ancient, unexplored part of the castle, trailing her
hand through the dust coating the beautiful tapestries that lined
the hallways to mark her path, she came across a door.

It was a large wooden door, banded and
studded with iron, with a rusty old handle on one side.  It
looked the sort of door she would never be able to open, even if
she had an axe, but she tried the handle anyway and, to her
surprise, the handle crumbled under her fingertips, and the door
swung ponderously open.

Behind the door was a tall, circular
staircase that wound its way up into the sky, and as she began to
climb it, she knew it must be one of the large towers that dotted
the castle’s silhouette.

The princess climbed for a long while, and
when she finally reached the top, she was tired.  But she was
also excited, for before her once more stood another door.

This door was much different from the door
below.  In fact, it was much different from any door the
princess had ever seen.  It was a large, stone door,
intricately carved with rosebushes, the thorns clearly
evident.  Stranger still, the door had no hinges, and no
handle, only a large, silver plated keyhole where a handle should
be.

The princess knew at once that the door must
be magical, and as she knelt to see the keyhole better, she noticed
that she could see right through to the room on the other
side. 

On the other side of the door was a large,
circular room which must have been the top of the tower.  It
was completely empty, but for a large, plain wooden mirror that
stood alone in the center of the room.  As she looked at the
mirror, expecting to see the inside of the door reflected back at
her, she instead saw the reflection of a boy.

He was a pretty boy; tall, with flowing
golden hair, and he was dressed in a fine doublet.  He looked
at her as she stared at him, and he waved and banged on the glass,
the look in his eyes clearly wanting escape from his glass
prison.’

Gel’s mother stopped there as she noticed the
slow, quiet whisper of Gel’s breath.

‘Sleep, my little prince’ she whispered
softly as she kissed her son’s sleeping head.

She stood, smiling as she put her hands
warmly over her lower belly, caressing her stomach and humming
softly as she left to room to go help her husband with the town’s
ledgers.

Closing the door to Gel’s room, she left him
to his dreams of knights and swords, princesses and dragons,
soldiers and battle, guns and glory.

III

The next day dawned early.  Roosters
crowed the start of a new day, as excited for this new day as they
were for every new day, and birds chirped and warbled through the
air.  Gel, though, slept through the cacophony of the early
morning avian concerto, and instead woke several hours after
sunrise to voices drifting in through his bedroom window.  He
heard his father’s rumbling baritone, and while he missed his
father’s words, something told him he should listen.  He lay
still, making sure not to make any noise for fear of drowning out
the conversation happening outside.

‘Look, mayor, we isn’t told much.  Alls
I know’s the Fog’s still coming, an there’ve been more bandits
’round than normal.’ said a young voice, seemingly trying to sound
gruff by spitting in the grass outside.  At least Gel hoped it
was in the grass, otherwise his father would be angry.

‘Well, Sergeant, where is the fog now
then?  And the bandits?  Have the bandits hit any
villages near here?’  Othwaithe’s voice rumbled, and Gel lay
still to hear more.

‘Lessee, the fog’s still creepin’ its way
down through Rege, last I heard.  Han’t hit the border yet,
but it’ll do that soon.  Most half of Rege’s covered
now.  Halgar’s been gone a few weeks, ‘an Vhindyar. 
Holfar got hit last week.  I got a brother what’s out by the
border, last I heard church’s starting to clear out soma the border
towns.’  The soldier replied, spitting again as he mentioned
the fog.  ‘As fer the bandits, could be anywheres. 
Impossible to keep track of ‘em really, what with all the refugees
coming out down from Rege.’  The soldier paused momentarily,
and when he spoke again, he no longer seemed gruff; just nervous
and afraid.

‘The bandits, well, they ah, they hit Jeyce
last week.  By the time the patrols got there, well, Jeyce was
gone, burnt to th’ ground.  Still ‘aint figured out how many
dead.’

Gel thought he heard a sob escape the
Sergeant as his father cut in.

‘I am sorry, Sergeant, that is sad
news.  Sad news indeed.  But what about protection for
us, and Clom and the rest of the towns up north?’  Gel could
tell that his father sounded worried.

You could tell from the Sergeant’s voice that
he stood up straighter, shaking off his momentary weakness from
before.  ‘Th Maeter’ll be sendin’ the Church troops in,
t’control the refugees an’ th’ bandits.  Should be ‘ere in a
week, I’ve been told.’

‘Good news, good news.  And where will
you men be till then?’  Gel’s father asked, not sounding very
much like he believed himself when he said the news was good. 
It sounded to Gel more like Othwaithe was still worried, and had
not heard nearly the promises he had hoped for. 

‘Well, we gotta hit Drey an’ Clom today, then
get back to th’ city for more orders.  We’ll prolly be back
‘round here to check in in five days ‘r so.’  The soldier spat
again before continuing.  ‘Speakin ‘o which, we gotta hit the
road if we wanna reach Drey ‘fore nightfall.’

As the soldier finished talking, Gel heard
the sounds of soldiers mounting up.  Throwing off his covers
and jumping out of bed to rush to the window, Gel missed hearing
any response his father might have had.

As he reached the window and leaned to look
out, still wearing his nightshirt, he saw the soldiers as they
wheeled around to ride out of town.

It was a group of seven men; each mounted,
and dressed in bright red military coats, brown pants, and long
brown boots.  The coats they wore were pretty; the tassels on
the shoulders, the way they buttoned up all the way to the chin,
just the red and gold motif everywhere.  The coats were nice;
they looked almost like real church soldiers.  The men wearing
the coats, however, were young; none of them were much older than
Gel.

Gel’s father had explained it to him
before.  The men were a glorified sort of town watch. 
Outfitted and ordered by the church, the majority of their work was
to bring news from town to town, and to escort any lawbreakers to a
city for trial.  It was an important system, but the boys were
paid poorly, and were on the road all the time. 

It was not that Gel’s father held any
animosity towards the young soldiers, certainly not through fear of
losing Gel to the church army.  Gel made it clear many times
he had no interest.  But the young boys came from villages
somewhere, and a village with no young men to work the fields
always had trouble.  Gel did not recognize any of the soldiers
below as being from Feyen, but he knew of at least one young man
from the village who had left to join the church’s army. 
Othwaithe had said many a time that soldiering was no life for a
good honest boy to lead, and he would likely say it again before
the day was through.

As for Gel, he knew why he didn’t want to be
a soldier.  It was not the travelling, or the mediocre pay,
bad meals, or chance of death.  It was that he loved
music.  He loved music too much to give his life to anything
else.  Not to mention he found most of the boys that wanted to
join the army were dumb or mean, or both. 

No, all that really interested Gel about the
soldiers was the weapons they carried.  Long, shining
flintlock muskets’, made from polished wood and burnished metal,
plain but gleaming in the sun, were slung over the shoulder of each
of the soldiers, and a fine rapier was strapped to each of their
hips.  The finely wrought thin blades and the elegantly
designed hilts shone gently in the sun, sitting openly for all to
see in the half-scabbards that the soldiers wore.

The muskets were a new invention, Gel
knew.  Black powder weapons; the muskets and pistols, the
cannons and mortars, they had only been discovered in the last
fifty years.  They had only been used in one war, when the
Church had taken back the last of Riin’s mainland holdings. 
But the stories Gel had heard: the smoke and fire that were said to
spit from the mouths of the muskets when fired; the death and
destruction that followed in their wake.  They were at the
same time frightening, for the destruction caused, and wonderful,
for the beauty and technological marvel held within each
firearm.  The guns, and the boys who carried them, they were
progress.  They showed the steady advance of civilization,
Othwaithe would say, though he would never say what the advance
would lead to.

In reality however, the guns and swords the
departing soldiers wore were cheaply made.  Mass produced in
order to supply an ever-growing church army.  The soldiers’
vests too were stained from food, drink and travel.  But Gel
did not to notice as the group rode quickly down the main road and
out of town, horses’ hooves clapping loudly against the cobblestone
streets.

The soldiers gone, Gel got dressed and
bounded down the stairs for breakfast: leftover bread and stew from
the night before.  But conversation at the table was subdued,
the atmosphere grim.  Othwaithe sat, lost in thought, not
touching his food, and Maerge spent the morning casting worried
glances in her husband’s direction.

‘I may be late tonight.’ Othwaithe said as he
stood, his chair dragging noisily along the wooden floor as he
rose.  ‘I have to speak to the Council.  They need to
hear about Jeyce, and the Fog.’  He looked sad as he spoke,
and he glanced quickly at Maerge before he turned to leave.

Gel jumped to his feet quickly, almost
knocking over his chair in the process.  ‘Will there be
fighting?’ he asked, at once excited and scared.  He had never
seen a real fight, the closest he ever got was when he and Mae
whacked at each other with sticks and pot lids, but a battle seemed
so exciting.