The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  "Ah, here you are," Keritanima said as Tarrin and Kimmie wandered over in their general direction as they looked at the ship. "Donovan, this is Tarrin and Kimmie. Tarrin, Kimmie, may I present Donovan Thale, the man who designed this ship."

  "Not really the ship, just the engine," he said modestly, nodding to them.

  "Don't be modest, Donovan," Keritanima smiled. "Who else is with you?"

  "My whole team," he replied. "We're not letting her go out without us here to see how she performs."

  "I thought you said you tested it," Keritanima said flintily.

  "We did, your Majesty, but not under operating conditions," he replied. "We ran the engine for twelve straight hours, and she did fine. But you'll be running it for days, non-stop. She'll hold up, though," he said quickly, "but since we didn't do that, we want to be here to see if we can't improve her design with the next ship we build."

  "And since they'll be right here, if it breaks down, we have the people we need available to fix it," Miranda added.

  "True," Keritanima agreed with a nod. "When will we be ready to leave?"

  "We're still loading the supplies, so it won't be until tomorrow morning at the very earliest, your Majesty," Donovan replied. "But since this is a first for all of us, I'd like to doublecheck everything one more time, so I'd like to leave no sooner than tomorrow afternoon."

  "We'll be leaving tomorrow night, after sunset," she told him. "That gives you a full day and some spare hours to make sure everything's ready before hand."

  "Yes, your Majesty," he replied calmly. "Everything will be ready. You have my guarantee of that, even if I have to step on a few necks to do it."

  "Step away, Donovan. This journey has the highest priority. Until we leave, you'll be speaking with my voice."

  "Thank you, your Majesty. I've been having trouble getting supplies from the other ships and the Vendari. They keep sending the wrong things. One fool loaded four barrels of gunpowder in the hold!"

  "Don't all Wikuni ships carry cannons?" Kimmie asked curiously.

  "This ship can't use gunpowder, my Lady," Donovan answered her. "The steam engine uses a fire to make the steam, and there's always a chance that the fire may get out of control and set off the gunpowder. I'll be able to design some ships that can carry gunpowder later, but since this is the very first ship of its kind, we don't want to take any chances."

  "A wise precaution," Keritanima assured him. "The other ships will do the fighting for us if it comes down to it."

  "We thought that too, your Majesty," Donovan nodded.

  A rare reptillian Wikuni, tall and scaly, with a thick, meaty tail, was the one that showed Tarrin and Kimmie to their cabin. Keritanima's warnings had been correct, for the cabin was very small and very cramped. It had only a single bed, but at least Keritanima had thought ahead to have a bed installed large enough for him. It had a large chest at the foot of the bed, which was almost against the opposite wall, and only about seven spans of floor between the bed and the door. The cabin was not designed for extended stays, that much was for sure. The place was clean and sterile, but at least the ceiling was high enough to keep Tarrin's head from hitting the low beams that served as the deck of the level above. It had a window, a small round porthole, over the bed, that had a view of the coastline. Kimmie opened the chest and looked inside, then chuckled. "Enough room for our clothes, but not much else," she said. "I'll have to leave my equipment with Phandebrass."

  "I'd hate to see how much room he'll have when he gets all his things in his cabin," Tarrin noted as he sat down on the bed. "He may end up sleeping up on deck."

  "As long as he can get from the bed to the door, I think he'll be alright," Kimmie chuckled, reaching down and grabbing his paw. "Let's go look around. I want to see this steam engine thing."

  Tarrin and Kimmie joined their other friends in an informal tour of the ship by the man Donovan. He showed them the steering deck and some of the mecahnical gadgets that would tell the men in the engine room how fast they wanted the ship to go, and then he showed them the engine room. It took up the entire back half of the ship, forcing everything into the bow. It was comprised of a huge metal tank of some sort that had a multitude of pipes and metal things running all over it. Tarrin could see what looked like huge gears that ran from the massive contraption to a heavy shaft that extended out of the wall. That had to go to the paddlewheel, he realized. He couldn't make sense of much of anything he saw, but the ten Wikuni and four humans that were in the engine room did seem to know what was going on. There were levers and dials and wheels and handles scattered along the pipes, set into the equipment, jutting out of walls and the floor, attached to the many pipes that crawled all over the gigantic chamber. There was a huge door on the far side that led into the other hold that was in the bow, and Tarrin could see that it was filled almost to overflowing with a strange black rock. Coal. The smell of the place was certainly unusual, with the wood and tar mixing with the multitudes of copper pipes all over everywhere, and the sweat and fur of the Wikuni and the humans mixing with a riot of other smells he just couldn't identify, because he'd never scented them before.

  "It looks like a convulsing spider," Dar said honestly, which made everyone laugh.

  "I guess it does at that," Donovan chuckled. "Alright, here's how it works. We burn coal in that boiler right there, and it boils the water in that big tank right there," he explained, pointing to the indicated components. "The steam collects in the boiler until it builds up alot of pressure. Once it does, we open a valve that lets some of the steam escape. The steam goes through these pipes to the engine itself, where its pressure causes those gears to turn." He pointed to the gears. "That area over there allows us to engage different gears to make the paddlewheel outside turn slower or faster, no matter how fast the gears coming out of the steam drive turn. Leonin calls it a 'gear-force transmission junction,' but that's too long, so we call it the transmission area. The steam drives the gears and enters these pipes over here, then it collects in that tank over there, what we call a condenser, where seawater flows through pipes inside it to cool the steam back into water. Once the water collects in the bottom, gravity causes it to drain back into the boiler through those pipes over there. Some of the steam is bled off to run water pumps that keeps the seawater in the condenser cool."

  "It's all self-contained?" Keritanima asked.

  Donovan nodded. "We can't use seawater in the boiler because of the salt, and the fact that the water has to be very clean. So we boiled water and collected the steam back into pure water and injected it into the system. The same water gets boiled and recondensed back into water over and over again. It's the most efficient way to go about it, seeing as how fresh water isn't easy to find on the open sea."

  "What happens if you spring a leak?"

  "We'll lose some water no matter what, your Majesty, because some of the steam drives the water pumps and the whistle," he told her. "We have some barrels of spare water in case of an emergency, and if all else fails, we installed a smaller boiler over there where we can boil the salt out of seawater and use it. It also doubles as a fresh-water maker, since the water it makes is drinkable. But we're not going to rely on it quite yet."

  "It all sounds pretty complicated," Dar said.

  "It is until you've been down here a while," Donovan told the youthful Arkisian.

  "I say, you really have to show me the step-by-step procedure," Phandebrass told his countrymen with bright eyes.

  "You'll have to get her Majesty's approval," Donovan told him seriously. "She funded this project, so she owns the rights to it."

  "You can look, but you will not touch anything," Keritanima told him hotly. "Do you understand me? Touch just one control, and I'll have you thrown overboard!"

  "I say, your Majesty, I understand that this is a delicate device, I do," Phandebrass assured her. "Why, they're working with steam under pressure. One wrong move, and the whole thing will blow itself up!"

  "You should know a
bout blowing yourself up," Camara Tal grunted.

  Phandebrass ignored that. "I say, I must get myself a new book. I'll have to write all this down," he mused to himself. "I wonder if magic could improve the operation of it."

  "Not unless you know a way to set a fire in the boiler we don't have to feed," Donovan grunted. "Half the ship is taken up by the engine, and the other half with the coal. It doesn't leave much room for anything else."

  "It is most impressive," Dolanna said. " More impressive because it does not use magic anywhere in its design."

  "Magic is a strong and respectable force, ma'am, but you'd be surprised what you can do with a little steel, a little creativity, and alot of sweat."

  "Indeed," Dolanna agreed with a nod.

  "Well, that about finishes the tour, your Majesty. The rest of the ship is like any other."

  "Why do you have sails when you have this thing?" Dar asked curiously.

  "This engine is still experimental," Donovan told him. "In case it breaks down, the sails make sure the ship isn't dead in the water."

  "A smart precaution," Miranda mused.

  "When you're dealing with a prototype, you have to plan for breakdowns," Donovan told her with a nod. "It's the nature of the beast, as they say."

  "I hope there won't be too many, Donovan. We're depending on your ship like we've never depended on anything else."

  "We'll get you to your destination, your Majesty, even if I have to get the whole crew down here and turn the gears by hand."

  "Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Keritanima said with a smile.

  "Let's hope, your Majesty."

  The next day, the day they were to depart, was filled with bustling activity, at least for everyone else. The activity was taken on with a furious pace, for there had been a break in the rain, a rare break, and the skies remained cloudy and threatening to rain again at any moment. That gave the workers a certain amount of motivation to get as much done as they could before they started getting wet.

  Tarrin and Kimmie rose with the sun, though Tarrin's back was a little cramped. The bed was long enough, but it wasn't very wide, and that made him sleep pushed up against the outer wall. Tarrin dealt with that by expanding the bed a good two spans with magic, until it took up over half of the small cabin. He also made a small, narrow stand for Sapphire's little bed, which Phandebrass had given to him, since the drake didn't like the idea of sleeping on the floor, since she ended up in bed with them. Drakes liked to sleep high up, where their ability to fly would allow them to simply escape a predator by jumping out of the nest and catching themselves before they hit the ground. They were sacrificing some open space, but as long as they had enough room to open the door, it didn't really concern him. The only things they'd really be doing in the cabin were dressing and sleeping anyway, it was too small for anything else. Kimmie certainly seemed to prefer losing some space to having to worry about rolling out of the bed as it had been.

  Tarrin and Kimmie let everyone else go about their bustling, as Phandebrass, Dolanna, and Dar attached themselves to the scientists that had made the engine so they could learn about it, as Camara Tal, Azakar, Binter, and Sisska helped out the crew by stowing things and doing the heavy labor sometimes necessary on a ship, where their combined strength could accomplish things that took ten to twelve Wikuni to accomplish, and as Keritanima and Miranda talked with held long council sessions with some Wikuni and Vendari brought from other ships and the shore, organizing what would go on after she left, and organizing the roles of the four ships that would accompany them. They watched it all go by as Tarrin used the memory spell on Kimmie and used the entire day to do nothing but teach her Sha'Kar, both spoken and written. Every time he taught her a word, he showed her its written form. In that one day, Kimmie absorbed a staggering amount of the language, because they devoted an entire sunlight day to the task. Nearly fifteen hours, breaking only to eat or to stretch and relieve themselves. Since it was the day of the summer solstice and they were literally right on the equator, it made it the longest day of the year, and they used every minute of it to get Kimmie up with the others.

  The skies remained heavy and ominous most of the day, but to everyone's surprise, they began to clear out about an hour before sunset. The clouds disappeared with a nearly frightening speed, almost racing out of the sky and disappearing over the eastern horizon. They cleared out in time for the sun to shine down on the ship not long before it set, casting hot light that almost immediately began to evaporate the water pooled on the deck and clinging to the masts and rigging. The hot air became almost unbearably muggy as the sun dried out the ship, for the air was strangely still. There was no wind to pick up the humidity and blow it away. Sailors began stripping off their clothes as the sunlit minutes passed, until nearly everyone on the ship was wearing as little as they could possibly get away with wearing. It was worst for the Wikuni, whose pelts trapped the heat and made them all look absolutely miserable. Except for Keritanima and Miranda, of course, with Keritanima using Sorcery to keep the air around her cool and comfortable. Keritanima was immune to the heat, but Miranda was not, so she was doing it strictly for Miranda's comfort. That said a great deal about how Keritanima felt about her maid.

  The heat did cause a slight row, and that came from Camara Tal. Deciding that her leather haltar, as skimpy as it was, was simply too hot, she simply took it off. That didn't bother Tarrin or any of the people who knew Camara Tal, since exposing her breasts was not considered a violation of modesty in Amazon society. For that matter, complete nudity wasn't really a violation of modesty in Amazon society, given that Amazons didn't wear anything under their tripas, and the kilt-like skirts were so short that a stiff breeze exposed everything that most human women fought so hard to conceal. The only violation of modesty in Amazon society was touching. Looking was just fine, but one did not touch an Amazon in any sensitive area unless it was explicitely allowed. It didn't bother any of Camara Tal's friends, nor did it really bother the Wikuni, but it did upset the Tellurians quite a bit, who gawked at her and tried their best to ignore the fact that there was a half-naked woman parading around on the deck. The fact that she was such a stunningly attractive woman, with appealingly large but not oversized breasts that had not sagged a finger during her life, made ignoring her a very difficult thing to do.

  Kimmie found the entire thing to be quite amusing. They would pause in their involved teaching session to watch Camara Tal pace up and down the deck with a grim expression, anxiously waiting for them to set sail, and watch the eleven Tellurians on the ship scatter before her like mice before a cat, averting their eyes as she passed but stealing glances at her whenever they could, when they didn't think she was paying attention. They wanted to look, but they didn't want her to know that they were looking. That was what amused Kimmie so much.

  As much fun as the uptightness of the humans was, it bowed to their lessons. By the time sunset came, as the wind suddenly picked up and the sailors hurriedly made the ship ready to leave, Kimmie had managed to grasp the fundamental structure of the language, the basic rules of grammar, and had learned all of the most commonly used words and the most common verbs, and had begun to learn the conjugation of verbs for dealing with various locative and temporal states. Tarrin figured that in five days, if he taught her from sunrise to sunset, Kimmie would be fluent in both spoken and written Sha'Kar.

  "I've never seen a language where every sentence ends in the verb," Kimmie told him. "Torian and Sulasian are nothing like this."

  "When did you learn Torian?" he asked.

  "Tarrin, I am Torian," she grinned. "Remember?"

  "Oh, I forgot," he admitted. "Sha'Kar is a pretty complicated language, Kimmie."

  "I noticed. But it's very musical."

  "I know."

  They kept going right until sunset, when the smell of burning coal began to permeate everything, and the two chimney pipes--Donovan called them smokestacks--began to belch forth boiling clouds of black smoke. They were he
ating up the boiler, getting the ship ready to start moving. Keritanima came up on deck with Miranda, and they talked to Donovan for a long moment. Donovan was the ship's captain as well as the head scientist, so Keritanima was probably telling him when they were going to leave.

  Sapphire landed on his shoulder with a chirp and a little nuzzle, breathing hard. She and Chopstick and Turnkey had been flying around almost all day, even flew out to the coast of Vendaka for a short time to investigate the thick jungle, and she looked a little tired. She hadn't done that much heavy flying for a long time. He chided her softly about wearing herself out and put her in his lap, massaging her back just between her wings, something she very much loved for him to do after she'd been flying a while. She laid down limply in his lap and allowed him to do whatever he wanted, enjoying the attention immensely.

  Keritanima and Miranda came over to them, the Queen of Wikuna sitting on a rope bale with a flop, not looking very queenly. She looked a little tense, and he realized that their impending departure was wearing on her. It didn't take him long to figure out why. "The sooner we leave, the sooner we get back, Kerri," he told her. "Rallix is going to be there waiting for you when you get back, you know that."