Brian Pratt - The mists of sorrow

Hours later, Maki and the others return without Khalim. There is little rejoicing as they make their way through the buildings, faces peer out from windows but none come to greet them. When they reach the lane outside his home, Zyrn remains within and simply stares at them through the window as they go by.

A few glance his way but when they see him staring, quickly lower their eyes to the ground. “Fools!” whispers Zyrn to himself. When they at last move out of his line of sight, he heads off to bed.

The following morning, he again takes six swords and readies to return to the grayness. Jatta makes to approach him while he’s securing the bundle behind his saddle and stops when he sees Zyrn shake his head. Swinging up into the saddle, he turns his back on his longtime friend and rides out of the village without a word.

Out at the fringe of the gray area he finds the dead body of Khalim. Lying next to one of the swords he placed there the day before, his body shimmers with the grayness that has continued to advance. What a waste!

Dismounting a dozen yards from the fringe, he removes his bundle and begins marking the boundary once more. When he’s done, he takes his horse by the reins and begins walking back home. Not in any hurry to return there, he wonders if he can even live among people who are capable of such an act.

No matter what may happen, his home will never be the same. Not after something like this. Deep in his thoughts, he fails to see the approaching riders before they’re almost upon him.

“Zyrn!” one of the riders cries. It’s the man whom he had sent for the priest, and riding at his side is the priest himself. Wearing the robes of a priest of Dmon-Li, the man looks at him rather haughtily.

“Thank goodness you came Father,” Zyrn says as the priest approaches.

“Yes, yes, yes,” the priest says rather impatiently. “This young man here was most insistent about some sort of problem. He harangued us until the temple gave in and sent me.” Looking as if he feels this is going to be a complete waste of time and is only doing it because he has to, he adds, “So where is this ‘thing’?”

Swinging into the saddle, Zyrn turns his horse back toward where he’s been marking the fringe and says, “It’s this way, about a mile.”

Sighing, the priest says, “Lead on. Let’s get this over with.”

Kicking his horse into a fast trot, Zyrn leads the priest and the rider back to the grayness. When it comes into view, he says, “There it is.”

At first it looks nothing more than the haze you would see from the heat rising off the ground. “Is this some sort of joke?” he priest asks, not amused.

Zyrn remains quiet as they continue to close the distance. Soon the rows of swords he has placed there over the past few days become visible where they are sticking out of the ground. He turns back to the priest and says, “I used the swords to mark the edge. It’s growing.”

The priest finally realizes the shimmer is not due to the heat as he at first thought. “What is it?” he asks, a nervous catch to his voice.

“I don’t know,” replies Zyrn. “But it’s deadly. Whatever it touches, dies.”

Then the priest gasps when he sees the body of Khalim lying within the shimmering field of gray.

“That’s Khalim,” explains Zyrn. “Last night, several men from my village brought him out here as a sacrifice thinking it would appease the gods.”

“Why did they do that?” the priest asks.

Launching into the tale, Zyrn relates everything to the priest. From the first scavenging expedition, the second ill-fated one when all but Khalim had fallen to the grayness, and ending at the senseless sacrifice of Khalim.

Dismounting, the priest advances toward the carpet of gray. “Don’t get too close,” warns Zyrn, “it can advance pretty fast at times.”

Nodding, the priest continues to draw closer to the fringe until he stands three yards away. Reaching down, he picks up a scorpion that was crawling across the dirt and tosses it into the shimmering gray. He watches as the scorpion lands within the grayness, takes two steps then stops. Its body gradually grows to be the same color as the grayness.

“Fascinating,” he says.

“Is there anything you can do about it?” Zyrn asks.

The priest waves away the question. Summoning the magic of his god, he sends it out to the grayness in an attempt to discover what it is.

Zyrn watches as the priest closes his eyes and concentrates. At first nothing happens. Then a ripple seems to roll across the surface of the deadly grayness toward the priest, like a wave across the surface of a placid pond.

“Uh,” begins Zyrn in warning to the priest as the wave rolls toward him. Backing up, he and the other man put some distance between themselves and the priest.

Then all of a sudden, the priest cries out as the grayness surges outwards. His cry is cut short as he and his horse become completely enveloped by the mass of shimmering gray.

Zyrn turns and runs as the grayness continues to sweep forward. Another horse cries in pain and fear as the gray comes in contact with its hoof. Glancing backward, he sees the horse stumble then collapse as the wave of gray seems to wash over it.

“Run!” he yells as the gray continues to sweep toward them. Running for their lives, Zyrn and the other man race across the sand. Glancing back to see how close it is, he slows then comes to a stop when he discovers it is no longer advancing toward them.

“Lord help us,” he says as he sees the edge of the grayness now over a hundred yards further out from where it had been this morning. The body of the horse and the priest are now just lumps far within it.

“What are we to do now?” the man asks him.

Shaking his head in reply, Zyrn remains silent. It had reacted to the magic of the priest. He and others have been in as close proximity to it before and it had never reacted as it did just now. Could it be alive? If so he has no idea what that could mean.

He stands there thinking for several minutes as he contemplates the situation. The sound of the man leading the remaining horse over to him snaps him out of his reverie. “We better get back home,” Zyrn says.

Climbing into the saddle, he reaches down and helps the man to swing onto the horse behind him. Riding double, they begin the trek back to the village.

Since parting with Hedry, James and the others rode throughout the night with hardly any breaks. At one point during the night they came across a major road running east and west. Wishing that it ran more north and south so they could follow it, they crossed it and left it behind. Now hours later, the sun is beginning to peek over the horizon. James calls a halt. “Let’s give the horses a break and I’ll see what I can find out about Tinok,” he tells the others.

Dismounting, he and Jiron move away from where the others are getting a quick bite to eat. Removing his mirror from his belt pouch, he holds it in his hands as he concentrates on Tinok.

Jiron watches the mirror with keen interest but after several minutes of trying, its surface fails to do anything. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” replies James. “It could be he’s too far away, the drain of magic for the spell continued to increase which is an indicator that what I’m looking for is nowhere close.” Giving up, he puts the mirror back in his pouch and pulls out the piece of cloth. “I wish I had my compass back,” he says. The compass in question is the one he made way back when he first arrived in Trendle after coming to this world. Fashioned from wood, it would turn and indicate the desired direction when he used it in conjunction with magic to try to find something. Not for the first time he wishes he would have had the good sense to have another built while he was at The Ranch all last winter.