The Mists of Sorrow_ Book Seven of the Morcyth Saga - Brian S. Pratt [44]
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.
Chapter Nine
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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