The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  In a sudden shimmer, the two exceedingly tiny forms blurred, and then were replaced by two normal-sized figures. Tarrin returned his conscsiousness to the real world and stood up as Kimmie shook herself, almost as if she were shaking off water, and then glared at Phandebrass. "Don't ever do that to me again!" she shouted at him.

  "I say, I have no idea what went wrong," Phandebrass said absently. "That's never happened before, it hasn't. The spell should have ended hours ago. I say, I've never seen a spell manage to hang on beyond its duration like that, I haven't. How odd. I really must study this!"

  "Graaoooh!" Kimmie shouted, sounding like either an attempt to say something that ended in a growl, or a growl that tried to end in some kind of word. Whatever it was, it was certainly an unusual sound. Phandebrass ambled away, not even paying attention to either of them. "If I could duplicate the effect, I could make any spell permanent, I could! What a discovery! I say, I really must study this." He then pattered out of the hold, turning in the wrong direction and walking into a wall with an audible thud, before reappearing in the doorway going in the other direction.

  "I'm going to kill him!" Kimmie raged, holding her paws out with claws extended. "I'll skin him and use his hide to upholster my chair!"

  "Calm down, Kimmie," Tarrin said, then the situation got the best of him. Kimmie glared death at him as he began to laugh helplessly, so hard he actually got tears in his eyes. "How long were you stuck like that?" he managed to ask.

  "All day!" Kimmie replied in a furious tone. "We thought about trying to get up on deck, but then I realized that someone would come looking for us, and our scent trails ended in here. You almost stepped on me, Tarrin!" she accused.

  "I couldn't see you," he told her.

  "How did you find us?" she asked. "Once you got in here, that is."

  "I used a spell to locate you. It took me a while to make sense of what it was telling me, though. I couldn't see what it was saying, because I didn't think it was possible." He suppressed the urge to laugh again. "While I was trying to make sense of it, I saw Phandebrass moving."

  "At least he was good for something!" Kimmie hissed.

  "You looked cute like that, Kimmie. Almost like a little doll," he teased.

  "Oh, shut up!" she snapped at him, then stalked out of the room with his laughter chasing her.

  Kimmie didn't speak to Phandebrass until they reached Wikuna, but the mage probably never noticed. He spent the next two days with his nose buried in this book or that, trying to discover the reason why the spell didn't expire when it was supposed to do so. The two days that they travelled went by quickly for Tarrin, as he continued his lessons with Camara Tal and also trained Keritanima in Weavespinner magic. He had a new pupil now, and Dolanna watched on, even taking notes in a blank book she had gotten from somewhere as he showed Keritanima new spells, and taught her more and more about joining the Weave and using it for various tasks.

  It started getting apparent that they were close to their destination early in the morning on the third day, as Tarrin got up before dawn and decided to walk around to watch the sunrise. The sailors were all on deck, tacking to the wind and executing a turn that would bring them on a heading for the mainland. All the sailors seemed a little anxious but excited, probably happy that another voyage was about to come to a peaceful and unexciting end. The only time a true sailor was happier than when he put out to sea was when he was about to come into port. The drinking and the carousing and the ladies were all waiting for them at port, and that was almost as exciting as the open sea for a sailor. Tarrin moved towards the bow as the sun came up behind them, illuminating a coastline that was getting closer and closer, and the first signs that they were approaching a city were becoming apparent. He could see towers and a large coastal fortress.

  And he saw smoke.

  Tarrin peered into the gloom, unsure of what he was seeing. He waited long moments as the light became brighter and brighter, and then, when the edge of the sun began coming over the horizon, illuminating the sky above the land before travelling down to touch the land itself, he was sure of it. There were three distinct columns of thick smoke rising up from a very large city. One was coming from deep in the city, one was coming from the docks, and the third was coming from just behind one of the coastal fortresses that stood on a rise just before the shallow, bay-like harbor of the city, on the south side. There were three of those fortresses, one on each side of the island that split the entrance of the harbor, and the third that stood on the island itself. They'd built walls out from the island and sides facing it to narrow those entrances even more, making getting into the harbor while being attacked by the cannons in those fortresses a very risky proposition.

  This was serious. One column of smoke, Tarrin would explain away as a fire. But three? That was no coincidence. Keritanima said that the noble houses were up to something...this could quite possibly be it. Tarrin wasn't the only one to notice the smoke, as the sailors stopped chattering animatedly and became more sober, more grim. They all stopped what they were doing and paused to stare at the smoke, and they were probably thinking the same thing that Tarrin was thinking. What was going on?

  Torm began shouting orders at the men in Wikuni, and Tarrin, who was now completely fluent in Wikuni, could undertand them. He rode them about having a voyage to complete, and they'd find out what was going on when they got there, and to get back to work. They did so, but now there was a jerkiness to their usually smooth actions, as they tried to watch the smoke and do their jobs at the same time. One Wikuni, a dog-like Wikuni, nearly fell out of the rigging in his inattention to his duties.

  They sailed closer and closer, and the ships surrounding the Queen's ship tightened their formation, moving into a much more defensive posture. The sun rose from the eastern horizon and cast the morning light on the city before them, which seemed almost ominous now. Tarrin's suspicious nature automatically assumed the worst, that this was indeed some kind of attempt by the nobility to dethrone Keritanima. It didn't seem to make much sense to him, though. The Vendari supported Keritanima, and that literally meant that there was no way they were going to take the throne from her. They couldn't defeat the Vendari, not even if they had all the Wikuni on their side. So why cause trouble? They must realize that the Vendari were just going to march out and crush them!

  Tarrin blinked, shifting his thinking from the big picture to the core of the matter. He remembered what Keritanima said about her father and the danger he posed, that it started and ended with him. Well, the same could be said of Keritanima. If the nobility could kill her, they wouldn't have to fight the Vendari for the throne. If they already had Damon Eram, Keritanima's father, and they killed Keritanima, they could just trot him out and let him reclaim his throne. Then things could go back to the way they wanted them.

  Tarrin held out an arm, stopping a sailor in his tracks as he rushed towards the lines running from the bowsprit. "I think you should go wake up her Majesty," Tarrin told the Wikuni seriously, a short ferret-like Wikuni with a long, narrow snout and a pink button-nose on the end. "Tell her to come see me, and don't take no for an answer."

  "Me, wake up her Majesty?" the man said in a nervous, high-pitched, nasal tone. "I don't have a deathwish!"

  "You can get killed by her for waking her up, or you can be killed by me for not obeying me," Tarrin said in an ominous tone, showing the Wikuni his claws in a very direct manner. "Make your choice."

  The man blanched at the sight of those claws, which were nearly as long as the Wikuni's fingers, then nodded emphatically. "Go wake up her Majesty, yes sir! I'll go right now!"

  "Do that," Tarrin growled, feeling his feral instincts rise up even at the same time that his need to assert his dominance strengthened. The little rodent rushed away, literally running for the stairs below decks, and Tarrin gave him no more mind as he turned back towards the coast, watching the smoke carefully.

  Keritanima, Miranda, and Szath joined him several moments later, and Tarrin didn'
t really have to say anything to her. Keritanima took one look at the smoke, and her eyes flashed dangerously. "I'll have someone's head for this," she growled in a deadly tone.

  "I'm sure they want yours too," Tarrin told her. "Did Jervis say anything about this?"

  "No, he didn't," she replied. "But I'll go find out what's going on from him right now," she announced. "Stay here, Miranda. If you see anything happening, come tell me."

  "Alright," Miranda acknowledged as Keritanima and Szath hurried back to her cabin.

  Tarrin and Miranda watched the smoke as they approached, getting closer and closer to the city. They watched in relative silence, only answering questions as the others came up on deck after realizing that something was going on. Camara Tal, who had a background in military matters, seemed to understand the danger immediately. "If they took that fortress, they're going to fire on us as we pass it," she told them, pointing to the approaching fort standing on the rise over the inlet to the harbor.

  That made things more nervous, and they waited in almost grim anticipation as they got within what he thought was the range of the fortress. And there was no firing. They got closer and closer, then passed by it as they entered the harbor, and still no firing. They were close enough to see that the smoke was coming from the back of the fortress, but on the outside. Someone had indeed assaulted the fortress during the night, but they had been repelled. That made Tarrin breathe a sigh of relief.

  They pulled in to the quay with no difficulty, a quay where a very large complement of Vendari warriors and three carriages were waiting for them. As soon as the hawsers were tied down, the Vendari warriors marched out and flanked where the gangplank would be lowered.

  Tarrin, still standing at the bow, stopped worrying about the situation long enough to look at the capital city of Wikuna. It was indeeed a very large city, bigger than Suld, and its buidings were made of wattle-and daub or red brick. Occasionally, there was a building made of wood, and the larger buildings were made of a strange stone that looked like whitewash. Those were the new buildings, the old ones were obviously made with defense in mind, large, ominous constructions of gray stone interspersed with the newer, less war-minded buildings. There were more old buildings than new, but the old buildings seemed to blur together with one another and making the new buildings stand out. In the center of the city was a hint of gold, and when he looked closely he saw that it was some kind of building that stood higher than the others, with some sort of gold-painted face that made it stand out. They drifted into the harbor, forced to enter the harbor single-file with half of the escorting ships ahead and half behind, which was jam packed with ships and wharves extending out into the dark water. Some of those crane-like constructions he remembered from Den Gauche were also here, loading and unloading huge amounts of cargo from ships with their ropes and their nets. The formation around them opened to let the Royal ship out, dropping anchors and letting Keritanima's ship pass. They then turned towards the far side of the harbor, moving towards an empy wharf at the extreme southern side of the harbor, the wharf closest to the coastal fortress they had passed. The ship drifted in, threw out its lines, and men on the dock tied them to huge hawsers on the dock. The quay to which they had tied themselves was made of stone also, but it was the strangest stone he had ever seen. They were made of long, long blocks of it, cut thin, and it didn't look like any stone he had ever seen. He didn't see any Wikuni close by, but then again, they had landed at what had to be a private wharf, with no buildings standing at the end of it as they did for the wharves he could see further down the line. There were Wikuni on those other wharves, dock workers loading or unloading ships, sailors on the ships themselves or moving to or from them, and well-dressed men and women standing at the feet of the docks or among the workers, either supervising or observing them. This was the strength of the Wikuni, the trade and commerce that financed their massive fleets, and Tarrin paused to watch it in action. Sapphire flapped up from the side of the ship and landed on his shoulder, and he petted her absently as he watched the mighty Wikuni economy in operation, going on despite the smoke rising from the north side of the harbor, just behind the buildings facing the water, and the smoke rising from the coastal fortress and the area deep inside the city's heart.

  Keritanima gathered them all together, and then they left the ship quickly and without ceremony. She didn't explain what was going on, and Tarrin couldn't tell if she was happy or angry as she got in the first carriage with Miranda. Tarrin squeezed into the second carriage with Allia, Kimmie, and Camara Tal, and Dar, Dolanna, Phandebrass, and Azakar packed into the last one. The carriage had lavish cushions, covered with red velvet, but the roof was way too close to his head. He banged his head into that roof more than once as he tried to scrunch his legs so Camara Tal, who sat opposite him, would have enough room for her own. The carriage was never designed for such a large person. Tarrin only wondered how much fun Azakar was having in the other carriage.

  "I wonder what's going on," Camara Tal speculated. "Kerri looked mad enough to bite the hooves off a horse."

  "I think something happened last night concerning her father," Tarrin replied. "Something certainly happened, that's for sure."

  "Since that fortress didn't open up on us, I guess Kerri's forces won that fight," Camara Tal reasoned.

  "I hate Wikuni politics," Kimmie grunted. "They're so murky."

  "As clear as pitch," Tarrin agreed.

  "The core of the matter is Keritanima," Allia said. "We need that ship she can give us, and we cannot use it if she does not have the throne."

  "That's the short of it there," Camara Tal agreed, patting Sapphire on the flank when the little drake jumped onto her lap.

  Tarrin had to duck down to look out the window, as they travelled up streets made of either cobblestone, brick, or that same strange white stone that he'd seen on the docks, stone laid down in such large blocks that it must have taken ten horses to pull the wagon carrying it. Some of them were as wide as the street itself! The streets paved with that white stone were perfectly flat and smooth, very easy to disseminate from the rough cobblestone or brick streets they travelled. How did they get such huge blocks of stone to the street and make it so flat? There were many Wikuni on the street, going about their daily business, pausing to watch the procession pass by as small children chased after the carriages and the Vendari escorting it. They were dressed very much like they dressed in the West, dresses, doublets, tunics, and breeches. The architecture was also similar to Sulasian or Shacèan architecture, so much so that if they'd put humans on the streets instead of Wikuni, he would have thought he was still on Sennadar. The city smelled alot better than any city he'd ever been in; the putrid miasma of garbage, waste, and decay that permeated the cities he'd visited was very much reduced here. There was still hints of it, but all in all, it had to be the cleanest city he'd ever visited. There weren't piles of trash lining the streets as there were in other cities. The streets were clean and neat, and people filed to and fro in an orderly fashion. Wikuni wearing blue uniforms of some sort stood on a raised podium in the center of the busiest intersections, blowing a whistle and directing the many wagons that passed him by on the two crossing streets with hand gestures.

  As cities went, Wikuna was impressive. Not for its size or its wealth, but for its orderly appearance. Everything was clean, efficient, and well maintained. People didn't stagger down the streets drunk--at least not where they were now--and everything seemed to be organized. Sulasia could take some serious lessons from the Wikuni about how to run a city.

  They turned a corner, and after banging his head against the ceiling for the fifth time, Tarrin irritably leaned down as far as he could and put his head out the window to gaze up at the RoyalPalace. It stood within a large ornate fence, where Wikuni wearing the red uniforms of the military stood with muskets to their shoulders in defense of the main gate. The Wikuni crest was on the gate, seemed to have been inlaid directly into the gate to become a part of it, a li
on and a dragon done in etched silver facing one another across a brass chevron. Tarrin looked at the dragon on the crest and then looked at Sapphire on Camara Tal's lap, and he saw the similarities immediately. Sapphire was a perfect replica of a dragon, though she was much, much smaller. Tarrin looked past the fence and to the palace itself. It was absolutely massive, but it was not a castle-like building, as he always imagined it would appear. It looked more like some kind of immense mansion, obviously hundreds and hundreds of years old, with a massive dome made of what looked like gold rising up from its center. Tarrin realized that it was the same gold building he'd seen while approaching on the ship, since it stood on a hill in the center of the city, stood at the highest point in the city. It was a truly immense building, much larger than any one family would ever need, but Tarrin knew that it was much more than that. It also served as a central hub of the Wikuni government, populated by servants, courtiers, messengers, politicians, and the men and women that made the Wikuni system work. It was a testament to the position of monarch, not the monarch him or herself, the home of this or that noble family that happened to hold the throne at any one time for over a thousand years.

  The carriages went around the building, to a side entrance, and then they stopped. The Vendari marched off towards the back of the huge building as an absolute horde of servants rushed out of a pair of elaborately decorated double doors, two of them unrolling a red carpet out to Keritanima's carriage, which had stopped directly in front of the doors. Tarrin recognized Jervis as one of the Wikuni at the front of that procession, in his dumpy waistcoat that had the gold chain hanging from the pocket of the vest he wore beneath it, looking as frumpy and innocently harmless as ever. Tarrin opened the door of his carriage as Keritanima was helped out of her own, ignoring the hot looks from the Wikuni coachmen, one of which was trying to tell him in broken Sulasian to wait in the coach until the Queen was inside. Tarrin snorted and waved a paw negligibly at the Wikuni, then stepped down onto Wikuni soil and padded towards Keritanima as all the servants bowed or curtsied to her. All the servants and courtiers looked at Tarrin with looks of shock on their faces, either at his appearance or the fact that he wasn't obeying the commonly understood protocols and customs that surrounded dealing with the Wikuni monarch.