Lingering Haze (The Elusive Strain Book 1)

by James Berardinelli

  Persuading everyone that Stepan and Gabriel should travel to West Fork while the remaining six of us continued our search for Bergeron required more diplomacy than I had anticipated. Gabriel argued that he could go alone and didn’t need a “keeper”. He admitted that, although he couldn’t fight, he was an experienced enough outdoorsman that he could avoid or run away from any danger. I countered that his message was crucial and we couldn’t risk him being eaten by a bear along the way. He had to reach West Fork. For his part, Stepan was reluctant to leave me because he saw that as an abandonment of his duty. He relented only after a lengthy private conversation with Samell. I don’t know what was said between the two of them but Stepan dropped his objections and pledged to see the tinker back to the village.

  By mid-morning, Gabriel and Stepan had vanished into the scrub and grass to the east while the rest of us were hiking northward toward the sound of the river. We topped a gentle rise and stared into the belly of a canyon. There, perhaps one-hundred feet down, was the raging torrent of the Fork West River, filling the gorge from side to side and churning with a violence that reminded me of white water rapid rides.

  “If it comes to it, crossing that isn’t going to be easy,” muttered Willem. Not easy was an understatement; impossible was a better word. If we needed to continue our search north, we would have to backtrack along the river until we found a crossing point.

  We headed toward the higher ground, picking our way westward along terrain that was increasingly unforgiving. I was looking with my mind and eyes but wasn’t sure what might constitute a clue. I doubted we were just going to stumble across a classically built castle out in the open with a well-manicured path leading to the doorway. It was likely to be hidden, either by magical or mundane means (or perhaps both) so we were looking for traces of its existence - little discrepancies that might mark its location. Unfortunately, when it came to the outdoorsmanship, ineptitude was one of my defining characteristics. For eighteen years, I had been an indoor girl. Two months wasn’t enough to correct a lifetime’s ignorance.

  We stopped to rest and eat around the time that the sun dipped behind the tallest mountain peak. The temperature plummeted by about ten degrees in a matter of minutes. The afternoon’s search was as abbreviated as it was fruitless. We were forced to stop and make camp nearly two hours before the sun would have set on the plains. Stoking a fire proved challenging. Fuel was scarce and the stiff wind gusting down from the mountains made it difficult to keep the flames from blowing out. When Willem asked me to repeat what I had done near the swamp with the earth-fed fire, I was forced to confess.

  Esme, Alyssa, and Willem made no response to my revelation. Ramila, however, wasn’t as restrained. “This changes things,” she muttered. “Doesn’t make much sense looking for Bergeron if we don’t have a Summoner anymore. We all should have gone back to West Fork with Gabriel instead of stumbling around looking for someone we probably wouldn’t find if we had an army and a century.”

  I wanted to contradict her but a deep-rooted sense of self-recrimination wouldn’t allow me. Surprisingly, however, I had no shortage of defenders.

  “Janelle’s magic will likely return, just like her special sense did,” said Esme. “We’ve seen how scrambled she becomes after using magic and what she did to the soul-ripper was bigger than anything she’s done before.”

  “It’s more important now than ever to find Bergeron,” interjected Samell. “If something has happened to Janelle’s magic, who better to investigate it than a Summoner? And, regardless of whether he can help her or not, we need him to fight against the reavers.”

  Willem’s tone was solemn. “We pledged our service to Janelle to undertake this journey. I see no reason why that should change now. To question her decisions is to undermine her authority. She is the leader. We can make suggestions but, in the end, we must follow her direction.” He spoke in his native tongue, necessitating Ramila’s translation. The rebuke was a blow to her pride; a nasty glance in my direction showed where she placed the blame.

  There was little talk around the campfire that night. Willem was gone much of the time cutting up brush to feed the flames and my revelation had put everyone else in an introspective mood, myself included. Samell sat silently by my side, offering silent encouragement by his presence. Ramila wouldn’t look at me. I couldn’t tell whether she was more upset by my revelation or Willem’s anger at her response. Whatever harmony we had shared during the early stages of this journey was gone.

  Still weary from my experience, I lay down before anyone else. Sleep was elusive, however. The presence of so many earth reavers at the edge of my awareness nagged at me like a sore tooth - just uncomfortable enough to keep me awake and impossible to banish from my consciousness. Was it growing bigger and deeper? Was there more potency there than when I had first noticed it? Or was that my imagination, stoked by fear and worry.

  With those thoughts dancing in my mind, I knew I was in for a rough rest even before I finally crossed the threshold into slumber. There, in the blackness of the night, another memory forced my acknowledgment.

  I was a pyromaniac, or at least that’s what they told me. Whether or not it was true, it was a label I couldn’t remove because it had been attached by people in authority. Sometime after the fire had burned down our house, the investigators had figured out it had been intentionally set. It hadn’t taken a crack team of detectives to speculate who the culprit was. Ignoring the possibility of an intruder (since there were no signs of forced entry), that left my parents, me, and my sister. The one who liked to play with matches and owned a half-dozen propane lighters (even though I didn’t smoke) got the blame. The crime had been so inept, it was almost like I had wanted to be caught. To me, the clumsiness of the act was more disturbing than the fire-setting. I was smarter than that. Why had I acted so recklessly and with so little regard for the consequences?

  There had been “conventional” punishments, of course. Groundings, deprivation of possessions like my cellphone, and so forth. A lot of yelling and screaming and threatening. My mother told me she wished I had never been born. And I had been forced to see a shrink. It was a court-mandated order so even if my parents had disagreed (which they hadn’t), it wouldn’t have mattered. Dr. Graham was going to be a part of my life for at least the next two years, maybe longer. According to the judge, we were together to “determine what prompted this criminal act and ensure that nothing like it happens again.”

  Dr. Graham was nice and patient, adopting an attentive paternal demeanor in our three-times-per-week sessions. It also helped that he was easy on the eyes. At 29, just about double my fourteen years, he was too old to be seriously considered as a romantic interest (older guys not being my “thing”), but his good looks were such that I looked forward to my hourly blocks with him more than I might otherwise have. Whether we were “making progress”…that was in the eye of the beholder.

  I thought the whole thing was a waste of time. I didn’t have a compulsion for an encore but no one believed me when I said that. My parents searched my room for fire starters every time I left the house. Dr. Graham didn’t pressure me on my pyromania; he asked questions to get me talking but most were about my upbringing and my feelings and had nothing to do with the night that had landed me in this situation. Until today, that was. During this afternoon’s situation, he had finally confronted the reason the two of us were spending so much time together.

  “Do you know why you did it, Janelle?”

  He didn’t have to say what “it” was. We both knew. At least he didn’t insult me by asking if I had done it. I gave him the same stock answer I had given everyone else: No, I didn’t know. It had been impulsive. I had wanted to lash out and destroy something and fire had seemed the surest way to get it done. The moment I realized what I had done, I wished I could take it back. (That was a lie.) It had been the biggest mistake of my life. (Probably true but only because I got caught.) I would never consider doing something like that again. (A
lthough who knew what the future might hold?)

  He listened to my rote explanation with his usual attentiveness. When I was done, he leaned forward, rested his elbows on his desk, and brought his hands together so his steepled fingers rested against his mustached upper lip.

  “You know, the Native Americans once lit huge bonfires. They used them to create smoke signals, a form of long-distance communication that predated the telegraph or telephone.” I was surprised that he was talking down to me. One of the things I liked about Dr. Graham is that he accepted my intelligence and treated me with respect. Of course I knew about smoke signals. Every kid learned about them in elementary school. What was his point?

  “The fire you lit was your way of sending out smoke signals, Janelle. A bit extreme, I admit, but burning down your house was a way of communicating with people who weren’t hearing you. I don’t believe you’re remorseful about what happened and I don’t think the fire got out of control. I think you knew what you were doing and achieved the result you wanted. Smoke signals - the way to get the attention of a mother and father who otherwise didn’t know you existed.”

  The memory faded as I woke up, momentarily disoriented and thinking I was in my old bed in my rebuilt room. Then, as my eyes focused on my surroundings, I remembered where I was. The night had passed. The fire was a mass of cooling embers and the first rays of dawn were peeking through the low clouds clogging the eastern horizon.

  Perhaps these memories could be useful for more than making me despise my previous self. Having retrieved this small chunk of my past, I was struck by a sudden inspiration about what could be done in the search for Bergeron. If my younger self could use “smoke signals” to force her parents to pay attention to her, could my present-day self use the same tactic to catch the notice of a Summoner?

  When Willem noticed that I was awake, he came over to me. “We’re going to have to find a crossing point today. I thought about this during the night. If I came out here looking for seclusion, I’d build my home along the northern bank. The river provides a natural barrier to anyone traveling from West Fork, unless they’re foolish enough to hazard the swamp. Living on the southern bank would make him more accessible to civilization.”

  I nodded my acquiescence. His logic was impeccable. Of course, it made sense for Bergeron to make his lodging as isolated as possible. The river and swamp were imposing impediments and he would use them to their best advantage. With a guardian like the soul-ripper and an impassible gorge, the Summoner would be safely protected from any West Fork-based intrusion unless a party wanted to detour to the far north, head west then come back south again - an inconvenient and time-consuming route.

  We spent a few morning hours continuing our search for traces that someone might be living in the foothills near the river but, like the day before, there was nothing. Or, if there was something, we weren’t looking in the right place for the right thing. That was the frustrating part, figuring out what could be meaningful. Around mid-morning, I called a halt and asked Willem what he suggested. He told everyone what he had mentioned to me earlier: we needed to follow the river eastward and hope there was a crossing point before it entered The Rank Marsh. He believed there would be one but didn’t know how long it would take to find it. “With a swift current like this, we need a ford where we can wade across with the water no higher than our waists. Swimming isn’t an option.”

  Despite a general sense of dejection and frustration, no one grumbled and we set our course back in the direction from which we had come, keeping the river on our left. It didn’t take long for the waterway to come even with the banks but the muddy flow was sufficiently deep and rough to discourage a crossing.

  “River’s high and the current’s fast,” said Willem. “Either a lot of snow melt or unseasonably heavy rains in the mountains. Fortunately, The Rank Marsh will absorb most of the flooding so there won’t be problems at West Fork.”

  My attention was captured by the change in ground cover. As we descended from the foothills, the grasses and other vegetation became more plentiful. Most of the scrub was dry enough to feed an ember. Impatient and unconvinced that we were going to find a crossing point without a lot more walking and wasted time (and even that was no guarantee of locating Bergeron), I decided that now was as good a time as any to put my plan into action. I called a halt and had everyone gather around me so I could outline my intentions.

  Initial curiosity turned to shock as my companions realized what I was proposing.

  “You’re planning to light the fields on fire?” Ramila was incredulous.

  “It’s dangerous,” warned Willem. He paused then added, “Very dangerous.”

  Even Samell was dubious. “A raging fire so close to his home might get the Summoner’s attention but it could so easily get out of hand. Once you set something like that, you can’t control it and, regardless of where we retreat to, a gust of wind could put us in its path. I wouldn’t be as concerned if you still had your magic.”

  If I still had my magic, I wouldn’t have to consider hazardous things like this. But, to my thinking, there wasn’t much choice. We could wait and hope my magic returned. We could hike a long distance around the river and maybe get lucky and find something on the northern bank. All of that would take time and, in that time, the mass of earth reavers would be getting closer to taking whatever action they were planning. Patience, often a valuable ally, was our enemy. Time was the enemy’s weapon. Why didn’t the others see this?

  “I don’t like it any more than you do. But we don’t have the luxury of being careful. There are a lot more earth reavers out there than there were at Aeris. They’re going to come down out of the mountains and strike somewhere and, no matter how well-prepared West Fork might be, they’re not going to survive it. Not without Summoners.”

  “Perhaps not with them, either.” The voice, surprisingly loud and authoritative, came from behind me. I whirled around to confront the stranger who, despite my fully functional mind-sense, had come upon us without my knowing.

  “And please don’t set fire to these grasses. Lightning does it often enough and the blazes are exhausting to contain. I have no desire to expend unnecessary magic extinguishing a man-made inferno. Dramatic, desperate action isn’t necessary to get my attention even in dramatic, desperate times.

  “My name is Bergeron. I believe you’re looking for me.

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Man in the Mountain

  For an old guy who had lived in isolation for who knew how many years, Bergeron looked pretty hot. His skin was swarthy (darker even than Ramila’s) and he had a stubble-free bald pate that shone in the sunlight. His close-cut salt-and-pepper beard and mustache were impeccably groomed, not obscuring the well-defined bone structure of his lower face. His eyes, nestled under furry brows, were a deep chocolate color and conveyed empathy and perhaps a little pain. Tall and slender in his dark, heavy robes, he resembled a monk or priest. I couldn’t guess at his age. He looked like he was in his mid-fifties but, with Summoners, appearances could deceive.

  His home, as Willem had supposed, was on the north side of the river, but deeper into the mountains than we had expected. His magic, employed effortlessly, had allowed us to cross the water and ascend a dangerous precipice with little peril. I realized that we could have searched for weeks and never found this place. The entrance was a slit in a rock face barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through. To all appearances, it was a natural fissure, but it concealed a living space more worthy of a noble than a hermit: a spacious, multiple room apartment carved directly into the side of a mountain, hollowed out with such smoothness and precision that it could only have been accomplished by magic. An army of construction workers with pick-axes would have taken decades to cut through this much stone and the results wouldn’t have been as aesthetically pleasing. Although Bergeron used torches and lanterns for light, some of the rooms’ floors emitted a natural phosphorescence - a gentle white light that was warm and soothing not harsh l
ike the fluorescent bulbs from my old world.

  After his surprise introduction, Bergeron had said little, promising only that there would be “time enough to talk about all manner of things once we’re away from the prying eyes and ears of the outside world.” He had led us in silence to his abode and offered us seats around a large wooden table in a circular chamber that was as big as the common room in the inn in West Fork. He had then played the role of the perfect host, providing each of us with goblets of a fruity beverage and setting out platters heaped high with a variety of cheeses and cured meats.

  It was hard to reconcile this image of Bergeron with what I had been expecting - a grizzled introvert living in isolation who would only reluctantly admit us when he recognized the immediacy of our peril. Instead, the Summoner was urbane and polite. There was no sense of wariness about him and he welcomed us without reluctance. Like all unexpected things, it made me suspicious.

  Once we had eaten our fill which, especially in Willem’s case, represented a substantial portion of the foodstuffs provided by our host, Bergeron cleared the table and sat in a chair at its head. When he spoke, he didn’t bother with small talk or the niceties of chit-chat, instead cutting immediately to the heart of the matter at hand.

  “I’ve known of your presence for some time now.” He spoke to us all but his gaze was fixed on me. “I’ve been expecting you and was becoming concerned. It took you longer to come within my sphere of influence than I anticipated. Not only that but our enemy is moving faster than I thought possible.”

  “You’ve been tracking us?” I asked.

  “Not specifically. My attention of late has largely been focused on the growing mass of reavers that has been sprouting in The Southern Peaks. Most worrisome. I first became aware of your party when I sensed a disturbance in The Rank Marsh that lead to the dissolution of its supernatural guardian. However, the lack of any magical signature caused me to dismiss you as those I was waiting for. This morning, I noticed that you were here and decided to creep in for a closer look. Only then did I recognize Janelle as a Summoner - a fact apparent only in close proximity.”