The Fire and the Fog

by David Alloggia

  Gel knew he had failed. He wasn’t good enough, and now they would all die.

  ‘I…I’m sorry,’ he started, lowering the lute, and Erris chimed in on top of him, staring daggers at Dan’r.

  ‘Now what do we do?’ she asked, venom readily apparent in her voice.

  Dan’r shrugged. While Gel played, he had tied down the sail and made it fast. Now he sat with his head leaned back against the mast. ‘Now we wait,’ he said, his eyes closed indifferently.

  And they did.

  Erris talked to Gel, trying to comfort him, but it was impossible. He had doomed them all. Dan’r had said they would die if he failed, and now they would.

  Dan’r said, and did, nothing.

  Ten minutes passed, the small boat bobbing up and down on the ocean, trapped in its bubble of light, surrounded by dual oceans of water and fog.

  And then twenty minutes slid achingly by.

  Gel and Erris didn’t even notice it at first, the tiny gust of wind. But Dan’r did.

  He sat up, his eyes popping open, and he grinned.

  Gel and Erris didn’t notice him.

  They did notice when the next gust of wind hit the boat. It was longer this time, steadier, and it even pushed the sail out slightly.

  ‘You did it!’ Erris grinned, throwing her arms around Gel in a hug, the boat rocking slightly back and forth on the calm waters.

  And then they were moving. Slowly at first, the wind weak, straining to fill the boat’s sail, but with time, the wind began to push in earnest, and the small boat began to, if not fly, then at least glide, through the water.

  For hours, even Dan’r was in high spirits, smiling, talking with the children, even laughing once or twice. But with the passage of time and the monotony of the trip, his mood slowly soured again.

  For five days they kept on, Gel playing to the wind and ocean every few hours. Dan’r provided food, replaced sputtering torches, and answered any questions with a surly churlishness that much belied his previous good humour.

  Then, without warning something happened. The front edge of the light thrown by the torches made a pinprick hole in the grey surroundings. Then the hole widened, and they were through it, the whole boat, out of the fog. Not into the sun, the wind and the rain or the stars, but into a giant, grey dome, reaching up high into the air.

  The colour in the giant bubble was, well, grayscale. There were no shadows; everything was covered in the same sort of diffused, muted glow thrown off by the fog. Colours were muted as well, the blue of the water, and the grey and brown of the rocks ahead seemed dry, washed out, like fabric or paint left out too long in the sun.

  The torchlight illuminated the rocks ahead, and the boat hit them, straight on, crunching. Its nose rose up out of the water, trapping itself on the large, angular rocks and the wind in the boat’s sails held it tight.

  Even as excited as they were to be through the Fog, to be on solid land again, no-one made a sound. The dome of colorlessness they found themselves in was too still, too solemn for anyone to break its silence easily.

  IV

  They pulled themselves out of the boat quickly, climbed carefully over the sodden rocks by the surf, and then stood, all three, and looked out at a large, grey stone tower reaching up into the fog above; looked out at a sloping, fertile island.

  ‘Where are we?’ Erris asked, as she and Gel looked at Dan’r.

  ‘We’re on Kol,’ he replied, and for the first time in days his voice seemed to relax, to soften slightly, ‘we’re on Kol, and that,’ he said, pointing to the tower reaching up into the fog not fifty meters away, ‘that, as luck would have it, is where we’re headed.’

  ‘The fog, it’s flowing out from the tower,’ Dan’r explained as they walked towards the stone structure, ‘we’re in the umbrella below it now, I think, and if we want to stop it, well…’ He looked up, to where the tower disappeared in the dome of fog, and left the statement unfinished. Gel and Erris both knew what he was going to say, and they needed no further incentives. If that tower was where they had to go to save their families, well…so be it.

  ‘I had hoped to use the lighthouse to get above the Fog, to see where it’s coming from, but...now we don’t have to.’ He continued as they climbed over the rocky terrain leading up from the shoreline. ‘Luck, of some kind.’

  As they approached the tower, they realized it not only reached high into the sky, but was also very wide at its base. The large wooden door at the bottom of the tower opened easily, noiselessly, and they stepped into a large, mostly empty column. A wide staircase wound around the left side of the tower, the steps and the low railing made from the same stone as the rest of the structure. Buntings and flags in various states of disrepair hung every few steps all the way up to the top.

  They climbed the stairs. At first, Gel tried to count them, but he quickly stopped caring when he hit a hundred and fifty, and instead tried to guess how many stairs might be left.

  ‘What’s that?’ Erris asked, noticing a large metal frame. It hung through a hole cut in the stone of the tower.

  ‘Elevator,’ Dan’r said shortly, taking advantage of Erris’ question to take a quick break for breath. ‘Whoever lives here would ride it up and down, rather than take the stairs.’

  ‘Why didn’t we?’ Gel asked, also breathing heavily. It seemed Erris was the only one of the three not gasping for air.

  ‘Well, it’s up here, not down there, isn’t it?’ Dan’r answered, and Gel had no response.

  They continued up the stairs as they passed through the ceiling, now walled on both sides by the grey stone of the tower, until they came to a second large wooden door, which opened as easily and soundlessly as the first.

  They stepped out into a large sitting room. Couches and high backed, well padded chairs lay about the open, circular room. Various rugs and unlit lanterns were spaced out to alleviate the stark gloom of the grey stone.

  They ignored this first floor, open and empty as it was, and continued up the stairs. They stepped into a much smaller sitting room, this one with an empty fireplace and two well worn chairs facing it, a scattering of books strewn about. Erris immediately wanted to turn to the books, to go through them, but Dan’r moved ahead purposefully. Beside the sitting room was a small kitchen, with a table for eating. It was all spotless, unused. The stairs continued up the left side of the tower, but at the back, a stone wall cut off the rest of the room, and a short stone staircase lead to a raised room at the back. Dan’r ignored it all, and continued up the stairs.

  They stepped up to the third floor, and Erris wondered why she had even bothered to notice the few books that had sat near the chairs below. The third floor was a study, lined with books and parchments, hundreds, thousands of them. More than Erris had ever seen. She was awestruck, and Gel had to pull at her arm to get her to move, stumbling, forward.

  They stopped in the center of the room, where a wide stone stairway reached into the ceiling, and Dan’r reached into his cloak, grunted, and pulled out another torch, then lit it with another paper pulled from his cloak.

  ‘Stay close,’ he said as he started up the last staircase. Erris and Gel followed.

  This last staircase ended in a trap door set in the ceiling, and as Dan’r started to lift it, Fog started to pour in, only to meet the light of the torch and retreat. With a shrug, Dan’r threw the trapdoor wide, then looked back at Erris and Gel, only a few steps behind, and motioned up with his head, before climbing out ahead of them.

  Gel and Erris stayed close, both to Dan’r and to each other, as they climbed out of the stairway. Both their mouths fell open in shock as, for the first time in days, weeks, they saw the sun. For a minute all they could see was the bright rays filtering down through a clear glass dome. After weeks in the fog, the sun was bright, too bright to believe, all three of them stood, blinking and squinting painfully as their eyes slowly adjusted.

  The Fog was cascading like a waterfall over the open sides of the tower top, spreading out
as far as the eye could see, and blanketing the earth below it in a grey haze, while the sun, the clouds, the sky, continued unchanged above them. It looked beautiful and terrible at once, the bright yellow sun beating down from a cloudless blue sky, through the clear dome that covered the tower top, illuminating the scene before them.

  At the center of the tower was a bier, and sitting on it was a woman, clad all in white, her skin and hair grey, and the Fog rolled out from her in waves. In her arms was the body of a man, his skin withered, dried, mummified.

  As the trap door opened, as Dan’r and the children stepped through the now open portal into the sun, the woman looked at them, her face showing pain, fear, hatred, sorrow, all at once. Her eyes were empty, dead, but Fog flowed down and out of them.

  ‘He did it for me,’ she said as she turned, placed the body of the man on the bier in her place, and stood. ‘He loved me,’ she stated as her hands fell to her sides, as Fog billowed out from her sleeves.

  Dan’r moved closer to the bier, and Erris and Gel followed.

  ‘You’re killing the world,’ Dan’r said as he moved closer to the elderly woman.

  ‘What do I care for the world?’ the woman screamed, her face distending as the Fog pulsed out from her faster, ‘He’s gone, and the world can burn for all I care.’

  It felt like her scream should shatter the glass dome above them, should shatter their eardrums, and Gel and Erris covered their ears in pain. Dan’r stood though, half crouched, as if waiting.

  ‘Back,’ Dan’r said, pushing Gel and Erris back and to the side as he flung open his cloak, papers fluttering in their pockets as he grabbed at scraps on either side.

  And then the woman was barreling forward quickly, her feet gliding along the thin layer of Fog survived the sun to roll fitfully along the stone floor of the tower-top.

  Dan’r jumped to the right, throwing fire from one hand, his cloak flapping behind him as the ball of fire appeared in and left his hand, streaming towards the woman. One hand forward, its long fingers extended towards Dan’r, the woman shrieked as the ball of flame skimmed past her side, but it missed, and she kept coming.

  ‘Do something!’ Erris yelled to Gel as Dan’r ducked behind one of the columns holding up the dome of the lighthouse, throwing lightning behind him, the crack of thunder masking the sound of protesting stone as the woman’s fingers tore deep furrows out of the column, her strike narrowly missing Dan’r as he rolled out from behind his cover.

  ‘Do what?’ Gel yelled back as Dan’r threw up a wall of water, scrambled behind another column at the far edge of the tower top.

  ‘Anything!’ Erris yelled as she moved towards the bier.

  Gel noticed that the Fog, even weakened by the sun overhead, was starting to crawl up Danr’s legs, almost at his knees, as he tossed another ball of fire towards the woman, narrowly missing her again. The Fog had already started up Erris’ ankles when she reached the center of the bier, bending down quickly to pick up a violin lying on the ground. She yelled wordlessly as she tossed the violin at the woman, striking her on the shoulder. It threw her off balance a second, gave Dan’r time to scramble away once more.

  The woman turned slowly, pained as she watched the violin fly off her shoulder, heard the twang of strings breaking as it cracked on the hard stone floor, screamed in fury as the violin tumbled over the edge of the tower, down through the Fog below.

  Dan’r threw again, from over on the left, a stream of boiling water, steam rising off it as it flew towards the woman, but her attention had shifted, and she powered towards Erris, Dan’r’s attack falling impotently behind her.

  The woman screamed as she came, and Erris barely managed to throw herself out of the way of the woman’s reaching claws, landing hard and striking her head against the bier as the woman glided to a quick stop and turned.

  Gel saw her as she turned, really the old woman coated in Fog, saw her face, the pain and the sorrow in it. She was old, frail, and the Fog fell down her face as if she were crying. She was…sad.

  She screamed again as she moved towards Erris, Dan’r yelling at the fallen girl to move. Erris was reaching an unsteady hand to her forehead, wincing in dizzy confusion as she touched the gash there when Gel finally moved.

  He had stood there for what seemed like ages, unsure of what he could do to help. He couldn’t fight like Dan’r, and even Erris had more courage than he, but…the woman was sad.

  He unlimbered his lute quickly and struck a chord, then another and another. He played to the woman’s sorrow, played to calm and comfort her, and the woman stopped, turned, stared at him with empty, crying eyes.

  And then a ball of fire ripped through her chest, cutting through the Fog around her and flying over the side of the tower to Gel’s right, burning through the Fog around the tower as it fell.

  Gel stopped playing as the woman keeled over, the Fog from her eyes drying up even as her body hit the ground.

  ‘What…’ Gel started, and Dan’r shook his head, panting as he limped his way over to a chair that sat near the center of the tower, as he sat with a pained expression and put his face into his palms.

  ‘She is dead,’ Dan’r said, his words muffled by his hands. ‘He must have tried to bring her back,’ Dan’r said, his head nodding towards the dead man on the bier. ‘The Watchers should have…doesn’t matter.’

  ‘What…’ Erris started, confused as Gel reached her, straightened her against the bier and dabbed at the cut on her forehead with his sleeve.

  ‘It’s over,’ Dan’r laughed suddenly, and as Gel looked around him he could see it was true. It was happening slowly, but the Fog, flowing out of the woman and over the top of the tower, over the world below it, the Fog stopped, like a stream whose source is suddenly dammed. The edge of the Fog was flowing out over the stone floor, flowing out over the edge of the tower, and it was gone. The tower was free of the Fog.

  ‘So…so we won?’ Gel asked, sitting down next to Erris.

  ‘That’s right, kid,’ Dan’r said, as Erris leaned her head against Gel’s shoulder. ‘It’s done. It’s over. We won.’

  Epilogue

  Rhone was nervous. The room around him, everything in it was just so…opulent. And it was only a waiting room. The chairs were gilded with gold, their cushions made of the finest red silk. He was sure anything in the room would be worth more than his whole house. He was a Sergeant; not even a Legnar. He controlled a group of five men, he was not special. Not yet anyway.

  But his Legnar had already given his report, and now the Maeiter wanted to hear from him, personally.

  ‘Think of it,’ he remembered telling his wife the night before, ‘a meeting with the Maeiter. Surely that has to be good for some kind of promotion. A new house, down by the water. You’d like that, wouldn’t you Maesi?’ He remembered other things too. The night before had been a good one.

  But now he stood at attention, in his full uniform, in the most opulent room he had ever seen, and he couldn’t be excited. He simply was nervous.

  ‘What if I say something wrong, or do something wrong. Will they send me to the dungeons, or just kill me? Or maybe demote me? How will I keep my house, how will I keep Maesi?’

  His reverie was broken as a well dressed servant opened one of the two giant lacquered and carved wooden doors at the other end of the room.

  ‘The Maeiter will see you now,’ he sniffed, looking down his nose at Rhone, as if he wasn’t good enough, even as he bowed Rhone’s way into the room, and closed the large door behind.

  The room behind the doors was much plainer than the sitting room outside. A large wooden desk sat at the other end, covered in papers, and behind it sat…

  ‘Sit, Sergeant,’ the Maeiter said without looking up, waving absently to a chair in front of the table.

  Rhone did so, nervously smoothing his hands along the pants of his uniform, hoping there were no creases or stains or tears. Why didn’t he buy a new uniform for this, he knew he should have. Maesi better have clea
ned them right, or…

  ‘I have already had your Legnar’s report,’ the Maeiter continued, breaking Rhone’s reverie, ‘so tell me, in your own words, what happened.’

  ‘Ah, yes, yes sir, yes Maeiter,’ Rhone stumbled and stuttered, silently cursing himself. ‘We were at the village, and the Legnar was interrogating a girl, and then an old man attacked us, and he threw fire and,’

  ‘How,’ the Maeiter interrupted.

  ‘I…I don’t know, Maeiter. He just…reached a hand into his cloak, and then threw fire.’

  ‘Very well, continue.’

  ‘Well, Maeiter, he attacked us, and he killed a bunch of my men, but then he told me and Ohn, and Dayet and Cit to run, so we did, but then we turned back to get the Legnar, and he told us to go after the man and the wagon, so we did, and,’

  ‘Skip to the important bits, Sergeant,’ the Maeiter interrupted again.

  ‘Ah, yes, sir, yes Maeiter, sorry. We followed them, and we saw them use torches to get through the fog, but before that they stopped and talked about where they were going, and the old man told them that the boy was going to play music to get them across the ocean, and that there was a whole ‘nother continent across there, and that’s where the man came from, and…’

  ‘That’s fine, Sergeant. That’s all I need to hear from you. You have done well, and may be excused.’

  The Maeiter stood as the young Sergeant bowed himself out of the room. The Sergeant had done well, as had the Legnar, and they would both get commendations out of it, he would make sure.

  He walked to a large map that hung on the south wall of his room. The fog had stopped, thinned, and was gone, and the lines drawn across the map in charcoal to denote its progress had been washed off, though they were still barely visible on the background. He would have a new map commissioned.