The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  "I didn't think I'd miss him this much," she admitted. "And I'm worried about him. Is he doing alright? Are they causing him any problems? Is he getting the hang of the job I asked him to do? It's frustrating not being able to be there to help him."

  "Then talk to him. That always helps me when I miss Jesmind."

  "How? He's not a Sorcerer, Tarrin."

  "Talk to the priest on the ship and have him contact the Palace. Have Jervis give Rallix an amulet," he said, holding up his own. "I know Jervis must have a couple of them laying around somewhere. As long as he has the amulet, you can talk to him. The magic of the spell comes from your amulet, not from his. You can use your amulet to talk to anyone with his own amulet. I've used it to talk to Ariana and Shiika, and they're not Sorcerers either."

  "I didn't know they could do that!" she gasped. "What a great idea! I'll go send the message immediately!" She jumped up, collected her skirts, then literally ran across the deck, seeking out the bear Wikuni that served as the ship's Priest. No Wikuni ship, not even a prototype like the steamship, sailed without a priest of Kikalli aboard.

  Miranda gave Tarrin a very grateful look. "Thank you for that," she said. "Kerri's been getting snappy lately."

  "I should have realized she was missing Rallix. She's a good actress to hide it for so long."

  "She's one of the best actresses in the world," Miranda winked. "I have to say, you two look very happy. What have you been up to over here all day?"

  "Teaching me Sha'Kar," Kimmie told her.

  "That's it? I thought you were whispering secrets or something," she winked. "I did see you two watching Camara Tal."

  "We were watching the Tellurians run away from her," Tarrin chuckled. "I didn't realize Tellurians were so priggish."

  "If I were a human man, I'd be intimidated no matter what race I was if I saw those heading in my direction," she said with a naughty little smile. "Didn't you notice that every man that talks to Camara for the first time talks to her chest?"

  Kimmie laughed delightedly, and Tarrin had to smile. Miranda was right. Camara Tal was certainly well endowed in that department, and even Tarrin had to admire her chest from time to time, just for its perfection. "She'd better keep them in the haltar, or they'll be hanging down to her navel by the time she's sixty," Kimmie said with a sly grin.

  "She's a Priestess, Kimmie," Tarrin said mildly. "I'm sure she knows some kind of spell for, well, bounciness."

  "You mean firmness," Miranda grinned. "Well, as much fun as it is to stand here and gossip about Camara Tal's breasts, I'm getting hot again. I'm going to go back to Kerri and stay in her cooling spell. I'll see you later," she said with a wave.

  "I really like her," Kimmie told him as they watched her leave. "She's very funny."

  "Alot more than that," Tarrin agreed.

  "You're right there. Alright, explain to me why there are four separate forms of the same verb again. I don't understand that."

  The sun set and the stars came out as Tarrin and Kimmie continued their lesson. The ship began to throb and rumble under them as he continued teaching her Sha'Kar, as they tried to ignore what was going on to finish the lesson, reach a good place to stop. All his friends came up on deck, gathering around Keritanima near the bow, and Tarrin and Kimmie stopped their lesson and joined them. They looked up where Keritanima pointed towards the southwest horizon. "There it is. The Diamond Crown," she announced. "And it's fully above the horizon. We made it."

  "Thank the Goddess," Dolanna sighed in relief.

  Tarrin didn't see the constellation, but he was confident that Keritanima did. "And now we sail southwest," Tarrin mused.

  "Forty days," Camara Tal added, putting a hand on his forearm. That told him how much she liked him, for Amazons didn't often touch others. "Let's all pray it's an uneventful trip."

  "Amen," Tarrin agreed, patting her hand.

  They all stood there for a long moment in silence, pondering the events that had brought them to Vendaka. They were on the ship, and the Diamond Crown was now visible. They were ready to go, ready to sail to where the Firestaff was located, ready to embark on the last leg of their long journey. Not all of them were there to give thanks for that moment, and those absences pained Tarrin greatly. Faalken, solid, dependable, funny Faalken, such a good friend, gone. Never to stand by Dolanna's side again. Sarraya, returned to her colony so she could rest and recover her strength. They'd see her again, but it would be after it was all over. She'd miss the most exciting part of the journey, when they faced this guardian and claimed the Firestaff.

  Either way, it would be good to see her again, because to Tarrin, seeing her again meant that it would all be over. The next time he saw Sarraya, the Firestaff would be safely hidden away and wouldn't pose a danger to anyone. He'd be free to return to Jesmind and Jasana, keep Kimmie close to him so he could be there for the birth of their child, and start a new life for himself far away from the craziness that had so altered his life. Soon, it would all be over, and he would have his life back.

  The ship's anchor raised, and then there was a strange rushing sound. Tarrin realized that it was the paddlewheel attached to the side of the ship, beginning to turn. The sound of the water beaten by the wheel was audible to them, and then the ship began to slowly move forward. They were under way, under way for the hiding place of the Firestaff, under way on the last leg of their long, arduous journey. Soon, now, very soon, they'd have the Firestaff, and his life would be his own again.

  Soon.

  Chapter 8

  It took Tarrin a while to get used to the novelty and difference of the mechanical ship. There were many things different about it, only a few of which the others could appreciate. Those problems were really annoying at first, but time and a little ingenuity solved them and made them either no problem at all or nothing to really worry about.

  The first was the smell. The smell of the coal and the smoke was always in his nose, causing him and Kimmie and Keritanima as well to sneeze quite a bit and have trouble with breathing. The smell was pervasive and insidious, and it irritated his nose quite a bit. The wind sometimes blew down and from astern, blowing the smoke across the deck and giving everyone the same problems they had. Tarrin's answer to that some days after they began to was erect a Ward over the deck the penetrated down as far as his cabin within the ship, that kept out the smoke and blocked the smell from entering. Kimmie and Keritanima both kissed him liberally for that, but nobody was as relieved about the clear air and the ability to breathe without sneezing or choking as Tarrin was.

  The second problem had been the sound. The steam engine wasn't quiet, and its rhythmic thrumming went on and on and on. It was audible everywhere on the ship, to a faint thrumming on deck to a deafaning cacophony when one was inside the engine room. It was so loud down there that the Tellurians and their Wikuni companions had to put cotton in their ears to avoid being deafened by the sound after prolonged exposure. It really bothered Tarrin at first, making it hard for him to sleep for the first few nights, but then he began to grow accustomed to its sound. Tarrin learned to stay out of the bowels of the ship, where his exceptional hearing made the sound painful to him, staying on the deck and the one level below it where the galley and his cabin were located. He wouldn't go any deeper into the ship than that, and everyone learned not to ask him to do so. It became less and less of a problem as the ship travelled southwest over the days, until it became a part of the background noise that Tarrin learned to ignore. The only time he took notice of it was when it changed or when it stopped, as they shut down the steam engine occasionally to grease gears or check something, or to inspect the pipes, which were too hot to inspect while the steam was going through them. The stoppages when the steam engine was shut down usually only lasted a few hours, and then they were on their way again.

  The third problem was the rolling of the ship. Despite its great weight, the ship wasn't balanced in the water very well, for a great deal of its weight was in the bow, in the form of the hu
ge quantities of coal that had been loaded for the journey. That made the ship unstable in the water, and it had a tendency to rock excessively back and forth in the wind or the waves. That caused seasickness, even among the Wikuni, until hard decisions were made. Some of the coal was jettisoned into the water, for they'd packed the hold to the rafters to make absolutely sure they had enough for the trip. They didn't do this until after Donovan went over the amount of coal the engine had been using for the first six days of the journey and deemed it safe to drop some of their weight. The rest of the coal was smoothed out and distributed equally through the hold, and that helped balance the ship and make it much more stable. The ship did still tend to wallow a bit, but that was because it was a little shallower in the keel than a clipper, and shallow-drafted ships were more prone to the rocking action of the waves and wind.

  The fourth problem was the cramped conditions. Nobody could really do anything about that, but Tarrin didn't think that anyone realized how crowded the ship was until about the fifth day. The ship had twenty engineers on board to deal with the steam engine, and also had twenty-three sailors on board to help with the rigging and to maintain the ship as needed. Add to that the twelve of them who were strictly passengers, and that was quite a few people. The ship was big, but so much of it was taken up by the steam engine and the supplies that it left very little space left over for the people. There were always at least twenty people on deck, some of them working in the rigging or on the deck, but there were always people around. It was hard to find privacy on the ship, because the cabins were so small that one got claustraphobic after only a few hours in one. The air was hot, the climate was hot, and the boiler under the ship radiated its heat all through the insides of the ship and even made the darkest, coolest hole hot. And since it was so hot, the cabins below were almost unbearably stuffy. Even in the pounding, pouring rain, there were people on deck, just sitting in the rain because it was better than sweating to death below decks.

  The ship had its share of problems, but Tarrin had to admit one thing. It was fast. The paddlewheel didn't stop turning, and it pushed the ship steadily on their course, sometimes having to slow down for their escorting ships when the wind slacked and robbed them of propulsion. The steamship more than easily kept up with the clippers, sometimes outrunning them and having to slow down so they could catch up, and that seemed to irk the men on those clippers to no end. Tarrin could see it in their faces when they tied up with the steamship when it made one of its brief stops for inspection or repair. They had expected the outlandish contraption to fail, and now that it was outperforming their precious clippers, they were getting resentful.

  Sometimes Tarrin would stand at the rail and just watch the paddlewheel turn, amazed that such a strange looking amalgamation of iron tanks, pipes, gears, and rods, maintained with liberally applied grease and a whole lot of careful attention, made the wheel turn, and turn so steadily. It just whooshed right along, merrily churning the water and pushing the ship forward. It was almost as amazing as magic, that a group of men and Wikuni had come together and designed something that could move such a large ship using nothing more than boiling water. It was pretty remarkable, and they'd done it without magic. It just went to show that there were no limits to the breadth of their ingenuity and inspired creativity.

  One could stand and watch what looked like a waterwheel for only so long, but fortunately, Tarrin had other things to do. He kept working with Kimmie, teaching her Sha'kar for half a day, and in twelve short days she had achieved a level of fluency that satisfied him. Which meant that she was as fluent as he was, both in written and spoken Sha'Kar. She even had his accent, though that was perfectly understandable, given he was her instructor.

  Very little happened during that time, as they all got used to the crowded ship and its unusual noises and smells, as it steamed steadily southwest, turning gradually more and more southward as the constellation above them shifted by the slightest of degrees each night. Keritanima had them going towards the brightest star in the constellation, which served as the tip of the crown's formation, the middle of it. Keritanima figured that they couldn't go wrong if they steered by the constellation's center. More than that, they saw no other ships for those twelve days, having the very empty ocean on the southwest of Wikuna all to themselves.

  That changed on the thirteenth day, when the formation of five ships came across a blasted hulk of another vessel. It had been attacked and partially burned, the rains putting the fire out before the fire sank the ship, a western galleon. It was a wreck, with two of its three masts fallen and charred wood decks buckled and torn. There were bodies on the ship, Allia told them as she looked at the ship with her superior vision, and that was reason enough for the ships to stop and send a search party over to the ship to inspect it.

  Tarrin, who felt remarkably bored that morning, decided that he was going to go to the ship himself, regardless of what anyone else thought. So he used Sorcery to pick himself up off the deck on a platform of Air and float over to the ship. He probably startled half the Wikuni on the escorting clippers with his magical display, but he really didn't care. He set his feet down on the blasted ruin, and felt immediately that it had been caused by magic. The residue of the spells was still within the wood, and they were strong. The ship was attacked by magic, and the scattered bodies, many of them burned beyond recognition, told him that the attack came from above. Magical attack from above, that was classic Zakkite tactics. He knelt and put his fingers to the deck, relying on good old fashioned woodlore taught to him by his father to detect that the fires had burned about two days ago.

  The first of the Wikuni arrived, climbing up onto the deck using grappling hooks and ropes, and he told the officer in charge of his findings. The officer, a tiger Wikuni, nodded and pointed to one of the bodies. "That's the uniform of a Shacèan naval officer," he said. "But what a Shacèan galleon is doing all the way out here is beyond me."

  Tarrin knew why, but he figured there was no reason to tell him.

  "I doubt there's anyone alive. Zakkites take survivors for slaves," the officer told him. "But let's look around anyway. Sometimes someone does manage to hide."

  Tarrin helped the squad of six Wikuni search the ship. It was carrying no cargo, another oddity to the Wikuni, but they did find the captain's log in his cabin, and there was also a small chest with an impressive amount of gold. In another cabin, they found what Tarrin recognized immediately as spellbooks hidden under a pile of old clothes under a cot, which wouldn't have been found if Tarrin hadn't felt the presence of a magical spell that had been cast to hide the books from magical detection. There were five of them, and as he looked through them, he saw that they were quite full. Tarrin claimed the spellbooks as his own, putting them in an empty chest and telling the Wikuni that it would be dangerous for them to even touch the magical objects. They gave him a wary look and nodded in agreement, not willing to fight the imtimidating Were-cat over something he obviously intended to keep.

  They completed their search, even searching the bilges, then they collected up everything that the Wikuni intended to salvage from the vessel and began loading it into the longboat they'd used to ferry over. Tarrin took the chest back to the steamship himself, and found himself facing five angry female faces. Keritanima, Allia, Kimmie, Dolanna, and Camara Tal all glared at him when his spell deposited him softly on the deck with the chest by his feet, and he stared at them all calmly. "What?"

  "How dare you go off on your own unescorted!" Camara Tal managed to say first, cutting the others off. "How am I supposed to keep you alive if you run off whenever the mood hits you?"

  "I wasn't in any danger," he told her calmly.

  "That's not the point!" Camara Tal shouted at him, then started swearing sulfurously in her native tongue.

  "The point, dear one, is that we need you," Dolanna told him flintily as Camara Tal continued to swear. "You are too important to just wander off, as Camara Tal put it. We are not saying you cannot go, bu
t we would appreciate it if you would let us know first. It will save us a great deal of gray hair."

  "I don't see why you're so angry," he told them.

  "You explain it to him!" Camara Tal told Keritanima, then she stalked off.

  "She's touchy," Tarrin grunted as he watched her walk away.

  "You forget, she is here to protect you, Tarrin," Dolanna told him. "It is her duty to keep you alive. Just because you have been apart from her from a long time does not change that."

  "She didn't act this way at Suld," he said challengingly. "She didn't have anything to say when I joined the battle."

  "That was a different situation," Keritanima growled at him. "Don't you dare try to compare them."

  "You were wrong, my brother," Allia told her. "The next time you wish to go off alone, ask."

  "Alright, alright," he sighed, though he still didn't see what the problem was. "I'll ask from now on."

  "Good."

  Though he got off relatively easy with his sisters and friends, he didn't get away quite as easily with Kimmie. She gave him the cold shoulder for the rest of the day, and even refused to talk to him that night as they got ready to go to bed. That frustrated Tarrin to no end, frustrated and aggravated him, and he found it to be a very brutal and effective means of punishing him. She had shut him out, turned him away, and all he could feel when he looked at her was guilt over something he did that she didn't like, and frustration that she wouldn't talk to him. He wanted to talk about it, work it out, but she wouldn't even acknowledge him! Kimmie knew him better than he knew himself, and he had to admit, she'd found the one and only way to get under his skin, something that even he was surprised was so effective. It got so bad that he finally grabbed her by the arms and made her look at him. "I said I was sorry!" he told her adamantly.

  "You didn't mean it," she hissed at him. "What if there would have been something very dangerous on that ship? What if it had been burned by survivors of a plague, and there you go flitting over there to catch that disease? Don't you realize that you're too important to go racing off like that? Did you see Keritanima in that longboat that went over to investigate the ship? Allia? Dolanna? Phandebrass? If you'd gotten yourself killed, what would we have done without you? Would you have deprived your cub to be of knowing its father?"