The Mists of Sorrow: The Morcyth Saga Book Seven (16 page)

Gesturing to the barrier Brother Willim
asks, “Can you move this while we walk?”

“You mean push it under the grayness?” he
asks. When Brother Willim nods yes, he thinks but a moment before
he says, “Yes, I think I can.”

“They’ve been in there a while now,” says
Scar.

They have done nothing but stare at the dome
in the grayness where James, Jiron and Brother Willim are trapped
since it first covered them. Miko had begun to try to use the Star
in some way to rescue them, but Zyrn cautioned against it. He said
that it was magic that it reacts to.

Frustrated, all they can do is watch. “If
anyone can get out of this it’s James,” says Stig.

“You got that right,” replies Potbelly. “In
fact, I remember Jiron telling us about the time they were in this
swamp…” He then goes into the story about the complex in the swamp
with the skull pyramids and the headless torsos.

“Look!” exclaims Shorty.

Cutting off his story at the point James had
found the hidden entrance to the complex, he again turns his gaze
to the shimmering field of gray.

“What does he think he’s doing?” Stig
asks.

The dome in which their trapped comrades lie
begins to move. Not toward them and safety, but deeper into the
grayness. “Do you think he knows which way to go?” asks Scar.

“Could be moving blindly in order to find
the way out,” suggests Potbelly.

Shaking his head, Miko says, “I don’t think
so.” He’s been through too many things with James to believe he
would engage in a course of action blindly. “He knows what he’s
doing,” he states with conviction.
I hope you know what you’re
doing!

Moving the barrier while still maintaining
an air tight seal to prevent the grayness from coming in, at first
was pretty hard. He had to keep the barrier beneath where they are
walking stable so as not to trip them. At the same time, he needed
to extend the forward area while retracting the rear.

Originally he thought to treat it like a
hamster ball, and just have it roll along. But he soon realized
that was not going to be feasible, not with the three of them in
here. Going slowly at first, he moves the barrier along the ground
at a crawl. Though as he continually does it, he finds that it’s
growing easier to do and soon doesn’t have to work as hard to keep
it going.

Another thing that’s been bothering him that
he has yet to mention to the others is their air supply. There’s no
way for the air within the barrier to be refreshed. The barrier
itself is sizable so if this doesn’t take too long, they may be
alright.

As they move through the grayness, he had
thought there would be more of a resistance. The rate of the
electrical pulses had increased as soon as they got underway which
is why he thought something was about to happen. But nothing
manifested. The way it reacted to magic, how it moves, he can’t
help but think that it is somehow alive. Maybe not intelligent, but
definitely alive. It almost feels like an episode of Star Trek
where they meet an unknown life form. He wonders what Captain Kirk
would do in this situation.

Thinking about Star Trek makes him
melancholy. He misses home and the things that he can no longer
have or do. What he would give for a pack of M&M’s right now!
Always a chocolate junky, he can almost taste the chocolate melting
in his mouth.

“James!” cries out Jiron.

Snapping out of his reverie, he discovers
the grayness has once again begun to seep through the edge where
the barrier over their heads meets the barrier beneath them. With a
thought he reconstructs the barrier sealing off the grayness that
had seeped in, then pushes it out and away from the barrier.

“Sorry,” he says slightly embarrassed.

One last errant thought crosses his mind as
he wonders if there is anything similar to the cocoa bean here on
this world. Getting back to the task at hand, he puts his idle
curiosity to the back of his mind as he concentrates on more
immediate concerns.

There’s no way to tell how far they’ve
progressed within the gray coated bubble. As near as he can tell
they’ve crossed at least half a mile. At one point they passed one
of the swords with which Zyrn had marked the edge of the gray area,
but that was some time ago.

Grayness above them, grayness below them, it
almost feels as if they are afloat on a sea of gray. If it wasn’t
for the firmness of the ground beneath them, he could almost
imagine being in a gray storm cloud.

“Do you sense anything?” he finally asks
Brother Willim.

Shaking his head, he replies, “Only what I
originally felt.” Nodding, James returns to the task at hand and
they continue on.

The continuous concentration on the grayness
has built sort of a picture in his mind of the paths the electrical
bursts take as they course through the creature.
Creature?
he asks himself. Actually he has begun to think of it as something
alive. The pulses always follow the same paths, almost like blood
being pumped through arteries. There is a definite rhythm to it and
maybe it’s just his imagination, but he can almost feel a
heartbeat.

“This thing’s alive,” he says.

“Alive?” questions Brother Willim.

“I think so, yes,” replies James. “Nothing
like we understand to be sure, but alive none the less.” Stopping,
he turns to Brother Willim and asks, “Wouldn’t that mean this
creature falls within Asran’s domain?”

“I…I don’t know,” he stammers. Such a
thought had never even occurred to him. Closing his eyes, he prays
to his god for guidance and wisdom. After several minutes, his eyes
open again. “You are correct in that it is alive. Now that you
pointed it out, I can easily see it. But as to it falling within
Asran’s domain, it does not.” He glances from one to the other then
adds, “There are many living beings that do not fall within Asran’s
domain. His charge is that of all things that live in nature.
Whatever this is, it doesn’t live in nature or at least nature as I
understand it.”

“Well,” says Jiron, all nervousness due to
their circumstances vanishing. “If it’s alive, we can kill it.” Now
that he understands it’s a living creature, his confidence is
returned. James gives him a grin and a nod before continuing
on.

Another ten minutes or so of walking brings
them to a point where their skin begins to crawl. Not due to the
workings of magic, but something else. “What is that?” asks Jiron
as he rubs his arm in a fruitless attempt to still the
sensation.

“I don’t know,” replies James. Sending his
senses out further toward the source of the electrical pulses he
encounters what can only be called a void. “Oh man,” he
breathes.

“What?” asks Brother Willim.

“I’m not sure if I can explain it,” he
replies. “Give me a second.” The others fall quiet as he continues
his inspection of the void. Maybe void isn’t the most apt term to
use but it’s the best he can come up with. In his mind’s eye it
appears to be an opening, a rip if you will. The electrical pulses
are originating from the other side.

“I think we found where this is coming
from,” he tells them. “It looks like a hole, not a hole as you
would understand the term. More like a way that is open between
this plane and another. It’s through this hole in our plane that
the creature has entered.”

“Can we close it somehow?” asks Brother
Willim.

“Maybe,” he says, “though it might take some
time for me to figure it out.”

Jiron waits there with Brother Willim while
James works on the problem. Then a thought comes to him. “Could
this be the spot where that explosion happened?” he asks.

“Maybe,” replies James.
Could it be?
Could I have ripped a hole in this plane of existence?
He
seriously doubts that. Back home on Earth they have had larger
explosions than the one that the others said happened here and no
such thing happened. Yet, magic doesn’t work there, nor do gods
meddle in the affairs of men.

Brother Willim clears his throat and then
says, “There is something one of my brothers told me that may have
some bearing on this.”

Turning toward him, James asks, “What?”

“Well, the night before we left to take your
friends back to Cardri,” he explains, “a green star fell from the
sky. He didn’t think anything of it, stars do fall from the sky at
times. But it was the color of it that intrigued him, he had never
seen one quite that green.”

“That’s saying something, coming from a
priest of Asran as it does,” remarks Jiron.

“Indeed,” agrees Brother Willim. “He told me
of it just before we left, said it fell somewhere to the south of
the keep.”

“Which is where we are,” concludes James.
“There’s more to this than we know.” A star falls from the sky, one
that is a color that even a priest of Asran thinks is odd. And it
just happens to fall in the vicinity where the magic bubble
detonated with dramatic effect? Hardly a coincidence, but what can
it mean?

“Think it has anything to do with what’s
going on here?” Jiron asks.

“Hard to tell,” replies James. “It does seem
just a bit too coincidental to me though.” Closing his eyes again,
he once more sends his senses to the void. It could have been
possible that he weakened the boundary and the meteorite punched
its way through. Realizing he doesn’t know enough about how it came
to be, he puts that train of thought aside for now and tries to
come up with a way to close or mend the void.

After studying the void for several minutes,
he comes to realize that there are a multitude of micro bursts of
power directed at the edge of the void. Excited by the discovery,
he narrows the scope of his examination to one small section of the
void’s edge. Then understanding dawns on him.

Coming out of it, he glances to Jiron and
Brother Willim. “The void is working to close itself but the
creature is somehow preventing it,” he explains. “I can feel pulses
of electricity that it is sending toward the edges of the void
which I believe is preventing it from opening.”

“Then if we can somehow interrupt the
pulses,” concludes Jiron, “the void will close?”

Nodding, James says, “I think so.”

“How do you plan to bring this about?” asks
Brother Willim.

“I’m going to short circuit it!” he
exclaims.

“Do you think they’re still alive?” asks
Stig.

“Of course they are!” asserts Aleya.

Stig has the good grace to look embarrassed.
He had forgotten her feelings for Jiron before he spoke.

After the dome in the grayness had begun to
move, it continued along at a steady pace away from them. Gradually
it grew smaller in the distance until they could no longer see it.
Now, almost an hour later their worry for their comrades is
steadily increasing. Surely something should have happened by
now!

A rumble in the distance brings them to
their feet. From every direction clouds begin moving across the sky
toward the area where the dome disappeared. The rumble they heard
was that of lightning moving between the converging storms.

“James!” Miko cries out jubilantly.

“Are you sure?” asks Aleya hopefully.

“Absolutely,” he says. “He did the same
thing after we fled Cardri.”

As the sun is blotted from the sky by the
thickening cloud layer, the wind that had been but a faint breeze
all morning long now steadily grows stronger.

Then from their right they see a dozen
people walking toward them. “They’re from a nearby village,” Zyrn
tells them as the people come closer. Running across the sand, he
quickly reaches their side.

“Zyrn?” asks Bokka, a man he’s had dealings
with before and a village elder too.

“Bokka!” exclaims Zyrn as he greets him.

Returning the greeting, Bokka looks up at
the converging clouds with apprehension. “Something strange is
afoot,” he says.

“A mage is here,” Zyrn tells him. Indicating
where Miko and the others are waiting, he adds, “Those are his
comrades.”

“Is this mage causing the clouds to move
across the sky?” another asks.

Nodding, Zyrn says, “Yes. He’s working to
destroy the grayness.”

“How?” Bokka asks.

“That I do not know,” replies Zyrn. Pointing
off toward the center of the gray area he says, “The mage is out
there right now.”

Above the area where he’s pointing is where
the clouds are converging. Dark and black, the clouds are now
darker than any this area has ever seen.

It’s been a struggle to draw enough moisture
to this dry area to form the storm clouds he’s going to require.
Beginning to feel the strain of holding the barrier for so long,
and now having pulled clouds from miles away, he holds the clouds
steady as he removes the water flask from his belt and drains
it.

Brother Willim removes his and offers it to
him. “I still have plenty if you need more,” he says.

Shaking his head, James says, “Not right
now, thanks.” Replacing his now empty water flask back onto his
belt, he returns to the matter at hand. He can feel the charged air
in the sky above him. When the moment is right, he increases the
polarity in an area away from the void to see what effect a
lightning strike will have on the grayness before attempting it on
the void itself.

He continues to increase the polarity to the
opposite of that which is in the clouds. Then all of a sudden…

Flash! Boom!

…lightning strikes the grayness in the exact
spot where he had increased the polarity.

James sends his senses out to pay close
attention to that area. During the next couple pulses that come
through the void, the ones that would ordinarily have passed in
close proximity to the impact point of the bolt of lightning, fail
to do so.

“Yes!” he exclaims.

“You killed it?” asks Jiron hopefully.

Bringing his senses back, he glances to
Jiron and says, “No. But I think I will be able to close the
void.”