Burning Night: A Tale of the Everburning City

Prologue: The Siege (Part 1)

This is the siege.

A pipe lay in the soil. Ceramic corseted in steel, it was warm to the touch. Grass and small weeds clung to its sides, creepers climbed it to reach the sun. The smooth face of folded metal sheet was marred every ten feet by a thumbprint-sized weld. And ever forty feet, a small exhaust port at the top of the pipe spat out a harsh and bright orange flame.

This is the siege. And that dancing flame is the wall.

A few dozen feet to the east, close enough that there wasn't a thought it didn't trouble, the Gloam loomed. Pallid grey mist, four stories high, churned and seethed just beyond the fire. Beneath the Gloam the shadows were as black as night, no light shone through the corpse-grey mass. Even the firelight just reflected off the swirling surface, and staring at the rising face of the Gloam looked like staring into a pool of cold, liquid stone.

The Gloam had prowled just a few dozen feet from the fires since the first days of the City. Nearly four hundred years, it had lingered just beyond the reach of the torches, watching through seasons and lifetimes that wound into centuries. Beneath the grey mists plants withered, sunlight drowned, and men died. The Gloam had been waiting since before any of the workers now building the next wall were born.

And as far as Carver Raeth knew, it would still be just beyond these fires, or the next layer they managed to put up, long after he died.

This is the siege. And the Gloam is their foe.

It was the primal fear stemming from that terrible truth, more than any rational concern, that made him raise his voice to his son. "Gerald," Carver barked, harsher than he meant to.

His son turned around almost before the word was all the way out. Gerald stood nearly ten feet beyond the outflow pipe that carried the flame. Ten feet beyond the wall, but well nearer than the closest the Gloam would ever creep. "Sorry, father," his son quickly.

His son pushed his mess of sandy hair up, away from his face and stared with those kind eyes of his. Not his eyes, Carver thought to himself. He had never learned to understand other people's pain as well as his son had already managed.

Gerald pushed his tangled, dirty hair up out of his face. Their eyes met, and Carver found himself wondering where in his family he managed to get his eye colour from. More grey than brown, not a colour either he or his wife gave him. And every time the boy was close to a flame, that grey seemed to take on the same orange light.

"Keep on this side of the fire," Carver said, pointing to the dirt beside him. "We're at least a decade away from surveying out there."

Gerald nodded, and climbed the metal walkway over the pipe.

"You keep teaching your son like this, it might be him laying out the path for the next Causeway," someone said beside him. Carver turned his head to see the familiar, slightly gaunt face of Arilla Edrius. She was smiling, though for some reason the smile didn't touch her eyes, which watched his own expression studiously. "We all burning know we could do worse than your son, Carver."

Carver chuckled despite himself. He couldn't help but recall the event she had brought up. "Some senior architect from High Central, thinking the fruit of her womb is the fire's gift to the City, lets her moron of a son do the job that a seasoned surveyor should do?" Carver asked. "I remember cleaning up the last time that happened."

"Six months of diffing extra irrigation lines, and we planted rice just to make it look like the place was flooded intentionally," the woman agreed, and this time her rueful smile touched her eyes. "I'll bet you remember. Pretty sure you were overlooked for inspection foreman because you broke his nose."