The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  She looked at him, then laughed. "I guess not," she admitted. "Will it always be that tiring?"

  "It doesn't get easy, but it will get less difficult," he answered. "You're still maturing into your full power as a Weavespinner. When you top out, it should be a little easier. But will always be tiring, even for me and Jenna. We can just do it a little longer than you."

  "Not if I have anything to say about it," she grinned.

  "We'll see," Tarrin said mildly, turning to look at Allia. "Are you ready to go?"

  "I am ready," she said with a smile.

  Refusing offers of guides, guards, even servants to discreetly follow behind them, Tarrin and Allia left the RoyalPalace and wandered the streets of Wikuna. To say that they stood out was an understatement, for there were only a scant handful of non-Wikuni on the entire continent. A being like a Selani attracted a great deal of attention as she wandered aimlessly with Tarrin, who looked more like a deformed Wikuni to them than anything else, wandered streets and talked about absolutely nothing of importance. They rekindled the powerful bonds that held them together, a selfless, giving love that they shared, a loving friendship so deep that it defied rational explanation. Every once in a while, they just needed time to themselves, to renew those ties, and the walking of the streets of Wikuna was a perfect opportunity.

  Of course, there was much to do. They visited the docks and watched the cranes loading and unloading ships, then they walked up a grand avenue that had a strip of green grass and planted trees splitting it in half. They found workers paving the road with that liquid stone that Keritanima described, and paused to watch them pour it out of wheelbarrels caked with the stuff, pouring it into molds bounded by wooden boards, then smooth it flat with long-handled tools. Tarrin managed to get close enough to put his finger into the residue in the wheelbarrel, and he used that little sample to use Sorcery on it to discern its ingredients. Powdered limestone, water, sand, fine gravel, a little lye, and some chalk. That was it. Strange to believe that this goopy liquid would dry out and harden into stone, and from the looks of some of the other paved areas, with the heavy wagons crossing them, a very hard stone.

  After that, they sat at a sidewalk cafe and ate things that neither of them could identify, for Tarrin could read the menu, but the food listed were things he'd never heard of before. Then they walked along the central part of the city, and found a small Wikuni boy hawking some of those "news-papers" of which Keritanima and Rallix had spoken. On an impulse, Tarrin bought one, and then he and Allia sat on a bench in front of a large fountain that sprayed water from eight different spouts up at one another, where they collided in the air and cascaded back down into the center. Tarrin thought that it would be interesting to see what the Wikuni felt was important, and that would be as easy as reading the inforamtion in the newspaper. They had to sell the papers, and that meant that there had to be something on it interesting enough to a Wikuni for them to pay for them. Allia looked at the blocky script printed on the page, strange printing that looked very sterile. Tarrin still had a little trouble reading Wikuni, because the written language had a great many sharp letters that all looked the same, where only an apostrophe, dot, or a very slight difference in the shape of the letter distinguished from all the others that had the same shape.

  "What does it say?" Allia asked in Selani. Whenever they were alone or wanted to speak privately, they spoke in Selani.

  "Give me a minute, I'm trying to translate a language I'm not good at reading through three languages here," he answered shortly.

  "Three? Why three?"

  "How would you translate something you read in Sha'Kar into Sulasian?" he asked.

  "I'd--oh," she said, her brows furrowing slightly. "I see. You translate it into you native tongue first, then translate again."

  "I'll make a linguist of you yet," he told her with a smile, perusing the paper. "Alot of it deals with trading," he told her. "How much something costs for the day. Gold, silver, copper, and things like honey, tea, sugar--whatever sugar is--livestock, wool, cotton, and a bunch of others. Half of this thing is some kind of trader's guide."

  "What about the other half?"

  "I'm getting there. Alright, this part here is all gossip," he said, pointing at a column. "About the nobles. This part here talks about some duchess getting drunk at a party and saying very nasty things about some countess. It's a bunch of drivel." He turned the paper over. "Ah, well, there's my mistake," he chuckled.

  "What?"

  "I was reading the second page first," he admitted. "This is the front page."

  "What does it say?"

  "Give me a minute," he said, scanning the page. "Now this is more like news. The story at the top, with the big headline, is about how the city watch found three bodies in an alley yesterday morning. The headline reads 'Boscany Strangler Strikes Again.' I guess this is a recurring problem," he mused. "Over here is a story about the war in Suld," he said. "It's--wait, it's not very nice. It's ripping up Keritanima for sending over Wikuni troops. But then again, the article is complaining about the cost more than the lives that were lost. That's compassionate," he snorted. "The person who wrote it calls it, let's see, 'a foolish little war in a foolish little kingdom beneath our notice. That Queen Keritanima-Chan Eram would dedicate resources and manpower to fight for such colloquial bumpkins degrades the honor of the kingdom and the reserves of our own treasury.'" He frowned. "Colloquial. It seems that all Wikuni are as arrogant as Kerri is."

  "Given the wonders we've seen here, they do have some small reason to feel that way, brother," Allia said sagely. "They have advanced beyond your people, so they naturally feel themselves superior."

  "Every musket in Wikuna would be useless against a single Sorcerer that knows how to weave a Ward that would stop their musket balls," he scoffed. "They advanced with technology, we advanced with magic. I'd say that that evens us out." He read the bottom of the page. "Here's something about the new system. It says that construction on the building that's going to house that Parliament thing was delayed again because of sabotage. Do you really understand Kerri's system, Allia?" he asked honestly.

  "I can comprehend it, but I feel it to be silly and redundant," she answered.

  "I just don't understand it. I guess it's the Cat in me. I can't fathom any kind of system that seems so restrictive."

  "It's her kingdom. If she wants to run it into the ground, that's her decision. It's not our place to interfere."

  "Eh, who knows, maybe it will actually work for them," Tarrin shrugged. "Wikuni are weird to begin with. A weird system may be just what they need."

  "An interesting viewpoint," Allia said with a laugh.

  After finishing with the printed newspaper, they set out again. They walked along both cobblestone and new concrete streets, looking at the mixture of old and new architectures that gave the city its unique appearance. From old, fortress-looking buildings with fences, arrow slits instead of windows, and battlements to the newer plaster-faced buildings, with their slate roofs and their dark wooden beams interrupting the continuity of white on their outside. All Wikuni seemed to like fences or walls, fencing in a little extra land with their homes to serve as gardens or lawns. Those areas seemed to be generally in the back of the houses, with the front of the house facing the street and the back, with the fence or wall, facing the street on the other side. Some wider blocks had houses facing the streets on both sides, with the lawn or garden sandwiched between them. Space seemed to be at a priority in Wikuna, with the smaller houses having very little, and in some cases absolutely none, of the fenced in area with the house.

  They wandered into one of the poorer sections of the city, and it was here where the differences between rich and poor in Wikuni society were so prevalent. The buildings were all run down and in poor repair, and the people who lived in them were all very thin, wearing dirty, torn clothes, and looked very tired and despondent. The worst were the children, unnaturally thin children wearing clothes that usually didn't
fit them, playing with whatever was available, able even in their misery to find some escape from the harshness of their existence with a child's game or a wandering imagination. Tarrin had never heard of poverty in Wikuna, had never heard anyone talk about it. Yet here it was, glaring at them with dull eyes, the dark underside of the shining veneer that the Wikuni wanted everyone to believe was their greatness.

  "So now we know that the Wikuni aren't any better than anyone else," Tarrin growled as they moved out of the poor neighborhood and into an area with slighty better buildings. "It reminds me of what we saw in Dala Yar Arak. It was so infuriating to see the humans so poor, so hungry. I couldn't believe that the other humans would just leave them like that, that they didn't care. Now we see that the Wikuni are the same way. They're much more human than your people, sister."

  "My people shun contact with the humans," she told him. "I see now that that's a good policy to keep. It seems that contact with other races has affected my distant cousins."

  They walked on until midafternoon, and then they both decided to return to the Palace. Tarrin returned to his apartments to find that Kimmie had taken over the study room, her spellbooks sitting on the desk and any number of strange vials, bottles, beakers, and vials holding all sorts of weird things standing on the cabinet and on a shelf that she had brought in. Kimmie knew they were leaving in the morning...why bring everything out like that? Kimmie and Sapphire were nowhere to be found; odds were, Sapphire was with Kimmie, and Kimmie was probably with Phandebrass.

  As he returned to the inner parlor, there was a strange twinge in the air. Tarrin sensed it and realized that it was Druidic magic, the beginnings of a spell. It was Triana. He sat down on the couch and waited for her spell to find him, and when it did, that familiar swirling circle of energy appeared before him, then sharpened into a visible image of her. She was standing in Jesmind's parlor.

  "How did you know I was here?" he asked curiously.

  She gave him a slight smile, which for her was a very big display of emotion. "I once held your bond, cub," she told him. "Since I'm a Druid, that means that I can still access it without actively holding it. I keep track of all my children that way."

  Tarrin looked at her, then laughed. "You don't cut any of us off your apron strings, do you?"

  "The kind of children I have?" she scoffed. "I have to watch them every minute, or they get themselves in trouble. Jesmind is bad enough, but you don't know Nikki or Shayle or Laren. They're all just as bad."

  "And now you have me. It must be enough to give you gray hair."

  Triana looked at him, then laughed. "Some things are worth the trouble, cub," she said with a wolfish smile. "What did you want to talk about?"

  Tarrin and Triana talked for quite a while about Jula. Where she was, what she needed, and when she'd be ready. Tarrin was pleased to learn that Jula was coming along very well, that Triana was beginning to teach her the laws and customs necessary for acceptance. She'd put it off because of Jula's instability, working to solidify her sanity before working with her on fitting in in Woodkin society. Triana said in no uncertain terms that Jula was completely stable now, that she had found her balance and was no longer in any danger of going mad. That pleased Tarrin, though he had already suspected it given his interaction wtih her when he was in Suld. He could tell that she had achieved some stability in her struggle against her instincts.

  After that, they shifted to his family. Tarrin heard all about what Jesmind was up to through her mother's eyes, about how she was dealing with him being gone and granting his attentions to Kimmie. That was important to Tarrin, because he wanted to make sure that her brave talk in front of him wasn't just a front. But Triana assured him that Jesmind really had come to accept the situation--"coming back to her proper Were senses," Triana had called it--and was alright with what was going on. Jesmind's love for him was very strong, and Triana told him that such powerful emotion clouded the Were-cat outlook about such things. "I go through the same thing every time Thean leaves," she admitted. "I go through a period of intense jealousy and anger, but it fades as I come back to my senses. Thean relates it to the human female's period of irrationality when she's in heat. He calls it my period." She smirked slightly. "Then again, he's not around to experience it, so he can make fun of it all he wants. I usually retreat from everyone for a while after we split up, so I don't kill someone I'd regret killing later."

  It was very strange to hear Triana admit to weakness. She was the oldest of them, and she was almost mythical in his mind as the pinnacle of Were, a solid foundation to which he attached his life. But in its own way, it was more than understandable that she would admit to weakness. She was the one that had told him time and again that certain aspects of Were mentality affected them all, from the very youngest to the very oldest. That Triana herself suffered some of those same things made her feel much more mortal, and allowed him to relate to her as a true kindred spirit.

  "Does Thean feel the same way?" Tarrin asked.

  She shook her head. "Males and females have different instincts, cub," she reminded him. "He doesn't like splitting with me, but he doesn't suffer irrational episodes. Males have it easy," she complained. "Males don't have an instinctual impulse to hold onto a mate. Females do. My episodes and Jesmind's, they're instinctual, not emotional."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Emotion does make them worse," she told him. "But that's the base of them. It has to do with the hybrid instincts of human and cat. Both human and cat females strive to find a mate. The human female tries to hold onto him, where the cat loses interest in him after he impregnates her. In that situation, we're governed much more by our human instincts than our cat ones. Remember, in a given situation, if one set of instincts reacts but one does not, we'll still be affected by the instincts that react. It's only when the instincts directly oppose one another that they cancel out."

  "I figured you'd have an answer," he chuckled. "How is Jasana handling things? She's always herself when I talk to her, but you never know with her."

  "She's doing fine," she replied. "She's clinging to the promise you made to come back, so as far as she's concerned, you'll be back any day now. She asks if you've come back every morning when she wakes up. It's really starting to irritate Jesmind." She glanced to her right. "How is Kimmie?"

  "She's alright. Busy learning about magic from Phandebrass."

  "That's not what I mean," she said sharply.

  "What do you mean then?"

  "Is she feeling alright? Has she been exhausting herself with her magical training? That can't be good for her right now."

  "That's a strange question, mother," he said calmly.

  She glanced at him. "You don't know, do you?" she asked. "Then again, she probably doesn't know either."

  "Know what?"

  She looked right at him. "Tarrin, Kimmie is pregnant."

  She couldn't have produced a more profound reaction if she'd hit him in the back of the head with a sledgehammer. He gaped at Triana for a long moment, then cleared his throat. "Preg--how did you--there's--I don't--mother!" he finally said indignantly.

  She laughed. "You can't hide anything from me, cub," she told him with amused eyes. "She's been pregant for a few days now."

  "How do you know these things?" he demanded.

  "I took Kimmie's bond just before she left, then released it and took Jula's bond from her again," she said simply. "I don't let anyone close to my family go around where I can't keep an eye on them."

  He was stunned, completely flabbergasted. "Why shouldn't she exhaust herself?" he asked. "She's a Were-cat, mother! She won't even start slowing down until she's ready to deliver!"

  "She's a Were-cat," she affirmed. "She's also a turned Were-cat, and a turned Were-cat has never carried a child before. The sire of the cub is a turned male, and though your other two cubs came out alright, I have no idea how it's going to work with a turned female. She's also a magician, and since we're magical beings, there's no telling how
her magical training is going to affect the child. That baby won't have any kind of resistance to the magical forces that infuse Kimmie when she's working her magic. I honestly have no idea how it's going to affect her, or the baby, and since this is uncharted territory, I have no idea if her status as a turned Were-cat is going to cause any unforseen complications. So I want you to tell her to go easier for a while, cub. She can still learn magic, but she can't exhaust herself, and she can't let anyone use magical spells on her unless you do it, because Sorcery won't affect the baby. Let's not take any chances."

  "Why won't Sorcery affect the baby?" he asked curiously.

  "Because Sorcery affects what the Sorcerer wants it to affect," she told him. "You know she's pregnant. Any spell you use on her, you'll tailor to work around that little complication. Do you understand me?"

  He mulled it over, then nodded. "I understand, mother. I can do that."

  "Good. Congratulations, cub. You gave Jesmind a cub, Mist a cub, and now Kimmie a cub. Since they're your three chosen females, it's only fitting that they all share a bond with you through the children you gave them."

  Tarrin stared at his paws, not sure what he should feel. Another child! Three children! Three! First Jasana, then Eron, and now Kimmie was going to give him another cub. He felt blessed, embarassed--that coming from his human side--and strangely proud all at the same time. A sudden wave of intense protectiveness rose up in him as well, the need to defend mate and child from harm establishing itself in his mind. He was ecstatic that Kimmie was pregnant, but the enormity of what they were doing hit him. They were sailing off into the unknown, into danger, and Kimmie had to go with him! Not really, but Kimmie would refuse to be left behind--he knew her too well--and Tarrin really didn't want to let her out of his sight.

  Tarrin looked up at his bond-mother and blew out his breath. "This is going to cause some problems, but all in all, it's good news, mother," he told her.