The Mists of Sorrow: The Morcyth Saga Book Seven (14 page)

“Stand aside Zyrn,” Maki says. The others
with him are unsure of themselves, but Maki glances back and
hardens their resolve. “We do this for the survival of our
village.”

Another of the men says, “You yourself said
that if the grayness isn’t stopped, it will come to the village and
destroy us all.”

“We will satisfy the gods with our piety and
devotion,” Jatta asserts. Jatta, one of the elders of the village,
is hardly someone Zyrn would believe to be party to something like
this.

“All you will do is kill an innocent man!”
he yells. “Will the blood of an innocent appease the gods? Do not
fool yourself into a course of action that will damn you for all
eternity.” He meets the eyes of each of them and sees his words are
having little effect. Fear, fear of the unknown has robbed them of
their senses.

Knowing he will be unable to sway them with
words, he reaches out and takes hold of Khalim’s arm. Just before
he pulled the mad young man onto his horse, he hears a whisk of a
sword leaving its sheath.

“Take your hands off him,” Maki says. The
point of his sword is but inches away from Zyrn’s throat.

Zyrn’s gaze bores into that of Maki’s.
Releasing Khalim’s arm, he stares at the men before him.

“Go home Zyrn,” says Jatta.

“Let us do what must be done to save our
village,” Maki tells him. Still holding his sword, the threat of
bodily harm hangs between the two men should Zyrn continue in his
attempt to stop them.

“Don’t do this,” he again pleads with
them.

Ignoring his plea, they begin moving again.
Walking around Zyrn’s horse, they head out toward the grayness.

Zyrn watches them go, a tear in his eye.
What madness!
Khalim will die because they are afraid.
Turning his horse toward his village, he races across the desert.
If he can get there in time, he might be able to convince others to
go with him to rescue Khalim.

When his village comes into view, Zyrn knows
he will not be too late if they can return quickly. Wailing comes
to him as he draws closer. He finds the family of Khalim grief
stricken.

As he approaches the outlying buildings, the
people take note of his arrival. None are able to meet his
eyes.

“Maki plans to sacrifice Khalim!” he cries
out to a group of men standing together. “We must stop him. If we
leave now we may be able to get there in time!” None of the men
make a move or even raise their eyes to look at him. Then Zyrn
understands, they all made the decision to sacrifice Khalim and are
too ashamed to meet his eyes.

Off to one side he sees Khalim’s father.
Riding over to him he says, “Surely you will seek to save the life
of your son?”

With downcast eyes Khalim’s father replies,
“I have three other children Zyrn. We have to think what is best
for the village.”

“How can you say that?” he yells. “Khalim’s
death will not stop the approach of the grayness. All it will
accomplish is the death of an innocent man.” The father remains
quiet, eyes downcast in shame.

Looking around at the assembled villagers,
men and women he’s known all his life, he cries out, “Will no one
come with me?” Not one person answers. He sits there on his horse
in disbelief, amazed at the lengths good people will go when fear
rules them. Saddened by what his village has become, he slowly
passes among those he thought he knew until he comes to his home.
Dismounting, he leaves his horse out front and enters through his
front door.

Despondent, he sits alone and grieves.

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.

Jiron nods. He remembers how well it had
worked. But the cloth works fairly well, though it will most likely
attract the attention of anyone close by when he uses it. After
all, a cloth that all of a sudden rises and moves to point in a
certain direction, who wouldn’t do a double-take if they saw
that.

Sighing, James holds one end of the cloth in
his hand and concentrates on which way Tinok lies. Letting the
magic flow, he opens his eyes and watches as the cloth rises until
it’s pointing in a rigid line. Based on the position of the sun,
it’s pointing off to the south.

“We figured that,” says Jiron, James nods
his head in agreement.

Stopping the spell, James returns the strip
of cloth to his pouch.

“Wish it would tell us how far away he is,”
Jiron says, and not for the first time.

“Maybe in a day or two I’ll get a better
idea where he is,” James says hopefully. “Eventually we will be
close enough for the mirror to pick him up.”

The others have finished their meal of dried
beef and water. Brother Willim brings James and Jiron over a
portion. “Did you find him?” he asks.

Shaking his head, Jiron replies, “No. He’s
to the south, but James is unable to determine how far.”

“We’ll find him,” Brother Willim says
matter-of-factly.

They eat their less than appetizing
breakfast and then return to the saddle. In no time they are once
again racing across the desert.

This section of the desert is uninhabited,
its proximity to the border of Madoc probably accounts for most of
the reason. Whatever the reason, James is glad they are able to
move into the Empire without being noticed.

They ride for awhile when Shorty hollers
out, “Rider to the east!”

Slowing down, they see a lone rider moving
at a leisurely pace. The direction in which he’s moving will cause
him to cross their path further to the south. “Should we see what
he’s about?” asks Stig.

“No,” replies James. “The less who knows
we’re here the better. Still, keep an eye on him.” It takes the
rider several minutes before he’s even aware they are there. When
he does, he immediately alters course to intercept. No longer
moving at his leisurely pace, the rider is practically flying
across the desert toward them.

“Damn,” curses James. “Reilin!” he hollers
to the Raider who is there to translate for them. When he has his
attention, he says, “Go see what he wants before he gets here.”