The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  "I know, but I'm not sure if it's as much as I'm supposed to be. That's what worries me," she fretted, putting the brush through her hair again. "I hope you'll still like me when I get fat and ugly," she told him.

  "You're not going to be fat, Kimmie," he said sternly. "You'll be pregnant. There's a difference."

  "I'm going to feel fat, and that will make me feel ugly," she complained. "What would you want with a fat mate?"

  "Do I have much of a selection right now?" he asked with a slight smile. Kimmie whipped her head around to glare at him, but when she saw his smile, she laughed ruefully. "I thought you were a sexy Were-cat before, and I still think you're a sexy Were-cat now. Even when you start getting round, I'll still think you're sexy."

  "What a sweet thing to say," she purred, leaning down to kiss him before returning to brushing her hair. "Even if I don't believe you."

  "Why say that?"

  "You say it now, but I'm not fat yet," she told him. "When I'm fat, we'll see how sexy you think I am."

  "You're such an optomist, Kimmie," Tarrin chuckled, caressing her belly. "Besides, you're fun to have around, even if we're not making love. I'll keep you just for your wonderfully bright outlook on life," he drawled.

  Kimmie looked at him, then laughed delightedly. "I never realized we graduated out of a purely physical relationship."

  "Who's lying now?" he told her with a pat on her belly. "You know that's not true."

  "Well, maybe," she hedged with a charming smile. "I guess I'm just a girl trying to keep her man interested in her."

  Her proximity was starting to get to him, and leaning back the way he was, staring at her bare hip and the peek of her bare round bottom, the sleekness of her back, the glance of the swell of her breast when she moved the right way, smelling her closeness, made him want her. "I'd say you're doing a very good job," he told her, leaning forward enough to kiss her on her hip, grabbing her tail and giving it a slight tug, squeezing it gently.

  She shivered at that, and Tarrin scented the change in the texture of her scent that never failed to entice him. She sniffed at the air audibly, then turned and looked down at him with hungry eyes. "Why brush my hair when I'm just going to muss it up?" she asked breathlessly, tossing the brush to the floor and climbing into bed with him with a great deal of kissing and giggling.

  Kimmie proved to be a delightful distraction to a serious, mentally draining day, and her ardor hadn't diminished when they woke up the next morning. Tarrin felt a little more relaxed and ready to deal with another day of nervous anticipation after Kimmie effectively burned up all his nervous energy. Allia had once said in a naughty tone that a little rolling in the sheets did much for one's temper, and Tarrin had to admit that she was right. He seemed much less high-strung than his friends, joining them on the deck for a breakfast of a bowl of ham stew passed out to them by the ship's cooks. The dining room had been taken over temporarily as a safe place to store the gunpowder, so everyone, even the Captain, was either eating in their cabins or on deck.

  "You're in a good mood," Keritanima noted as he took a bowl from Binter with a nod of thanks.

  "Kimmie was feeling frisky this morning," Tarrin replied with a slight smile.

  "If only I had Rallix here to be similarly entertained," Keritanima grunted in a sour tone.

  "You could have brought him along," Tarrin told her.

  "Yes, but I didn't want to put him at risk. This is dangerous, brother."

  "True," Tarrin agreed.

  "I wish we'd get out of this void," Keritanima growled. "I can't even talk to him right now."

  "You had him get an amulet?" Tarrin asked.

  "Yah, it was a good idea. I'm glad you mentioned it," she answered. "It's alot easier being apart when we can talk to each other."

  "Maybe I should look into those spells your Priests use," Camara Tal said. "It would be nice to be able to talk to my husbands right now."

  "Which one?" Dar asked.

  "Are you asking me which is my favorite, Dar?" the Amazon asked.

  "I think I already know which one that is," the young Arkisian said with a smile.

  "Oh? And which would that be?" Camara Tal asked archly.

  "Koran Dar," he answered.

  "Koran Tal!" she corrected him hotly.

  "That's all the proof I need right there," Dar grinned.

  "You just like him because his former house name happens to be the same as yours," the Amazon told him.

  "No, I like him because I've seen you pawing him when you didn't think anyone was looking," Dar told her with a mishevious grin.

  "It's a woman's right to paw her husband," Camara Tal said bluntly. "I paw all my husbands."

  "But you certainly seemed to be enjoying it with him," the Arkisian pressed.

  "I've made no secret of that fact that I do fancy him, Dar," she admitted. "He is certainly the most handsome of my husbands. But he's the one I want to father my children. Our children would be strong and good additions to our house."

  "You choose which husband fathers your children?" Allia asked curiously.

  "Of course," she replied. "We are a small nation with few people, so we're very careful to breed only with the best men to maintain the strengths of our bloodline. Koran Tal is the prime man in my harem, so he is the one I've chosen to father my children."

  "No wonder you're so hot on him coming home with you," Miranda noted in a serious tone. "If you can't have any children except with him, it makes it hard to produce heirs if he's not there."

  "Not can't, exactly," Camara Tal elaborated. "More like won't. Koran is a special man, and the children he will give me will be special. I won't settle for anything less than him. And I'm not getting any younger," she growled. "Women my age back home have four children by now, and here I am, still childless."

  "He certainly seems stubborn about going back," Keritanima said. "I've talked with him a few times. He likes you, Camara, he really does, but he just can't see himself going back to Amazar."

  "I'm going to change that," she promised with a grim look.

  After the meal, Allia returned to the crow's nest as the ship started moving again under the power of the steam engine. She didn't stay up there long, however, as the wind blew the smoke back into the rigging, causing her to drop out of the rigging as quickly as she could, choking and coughing once the smokestacks started belching forth copious amounts of the black smoke. She had to settle for standing on the top of the sterncastle with Miranda, sharing the spyglass with her as she sought to find their destination, as the poem hinted she had to do. On the deck below, all Allia's friends except for Tarrin, Binter, and Sisska paced nervously back and forth or stared worryingly out to sea, as Tarrin and Binter locked horns once again over the chessboard. Tarrin had yet to defeat either of the Vendari in chess, and he was bound and determined to do just that before they got where they were going. Sisska was much better at chess than Binter, but Binter was no slouch. Binter had been trained by his mate, and much of the genius Tarrin faced in Sisska was beginning to blossom in Binter's game play. Tarrin figured to defeat Sisska's apprentice, and then go after the mistress of the chessboard herself.

  Unfortunately, reality did not live up to Tarrin's ambitions that day. Binter defeated him convincingly three times, then he was crushed by Sisska later that afternoon. He sought solace with Kimmie and Sapphire that night, setting a chessboard on the bed and studying it as Kimmie read from one of the capture spellbooks. She finally looked up as Tarrin recreated the board as he remembered it and tried to figure out where he went wrong, how Binter had beaten him in the last game they played. "Tarrin, what are you doing?" she asked.

  "Trying to figure out how Binter beat me," he replied, rubbing a finger along his chin as he studied the pieces. "I don't see where I'm messing it up."

  "If you could, you wouldn't be losing," she said impishly.

  Tarrin snorted at her, flicking his ears in mild irritation as he looked at the chess board.

  "You know
what? I think you're getting into this to keep yourself from thinking about the serious things," she told him with a smile.

  "Probably," he agreed. "It's alot easier to think about this than worry about things we don't know about. All we can do is wait and see. Until then, I guess this is good enough," he said, motioning at the chessboard with a paw.

  Sapphire hopped over to the bed and sniffed at the ivory chess pieces on her side of the board. Tarrin smiled down at her, scratching her between the horns. "I should teach you to play, little one," he told her.

  "I don't think she'd be a good partner. But you could teach me," Kimmie offered, setting the spellbook in the chair behind her as she stood up. "I need a break from this for a while."

  Sapphire watched in strange fascination as Tarrin explained the rules of the game to his mate, showing her how each piece moved, and the rules that governed its movement. "Alright, so this one can only take another piece diagonally, but it can't move in any direction but forward unless it's taking another piece," she reasoned, holding up a pawn. "What happens if you move it all the way to the other side of the board?"

  "It becomes a queen," he explained with a raised eyebrow. "That's a pretty strange question."

  "I couldn't figure out what would happen if it couldn't move anywhere," she replied. "I guess that's a pretty suitable reward, if you can get a pawn all the way over without losing it."

  "That's the general idea," Tarrin told her.

  The ship stopped again that night, Jalis unwilling to move in uncharted waters in the dark, but Tarrin and Kimmie hardly noticed. Kimmie proved to be a fast learner, and her education and training as a Wizard gave her a very logical mind. That logical reasoning made her a dangerously talented chess player, and she very nearly beat him after their fifth game. Tarrin admitted that he wasn't paying much attention to the game, his attention diverted by Sapphire and her strange intent expression as she looked at the pieces. She even jumped up onto Tarrin's shoulder so she could get a better look at the board.

  Tarrin had lost track of the game at that point, as he studied his pet more carefully. Did she understand what was going on? Had the birth of the new sui'kun affected more than her lightning magic? Had it made her smarter?

  After recovering himself and defeating Kimmie for the fifth time, she begged off the rematch to go to the galley and get them all something to drink. Tarrin reset the board and then quite deliberately put Sapphire in front of it. She looked up at him curiously, her forked tongue flicking out to test the air between them. Her reptillian eyes were locked on his cat's eyes, as he tried to fathom the mind of the animal.

  "Alright, Sapphire," he said in a low tone, feeling his suspicions rise even higher. "I get a very strange feeling that you know exactly what I'm saying. Don't you?"

  She didn't react, but she did blink, her attention remaining eerily fixed on his eyes.

  "Maybe not exactly what I'm saying," he amended to himself. "But I do think you're aware of what's going on. More than even I realized."

  Her gaze didn't waver. Tarrin suspected that he could prove it, and he went about it by reaching down and moving one of the pawns on the board. It was a poor starting move, something he would not have done against a learned player, but he wasn't intending on playing a game. At least not in seriousness. He motioned over the board with his paw, looking at Sapphire. "I think you know what to do, little one," he urged.

  Sapphire stood up, walked to the edge of the board, and then grabbed the king's knight in her teeth. She pulled it over the pawns, then set it down where it would be allowed to move.

  Sapphire had known how the knight moves, and knew it could jump over other pieces.

  Tarrin moved out his own knight to defend the pawn he had moved earlier, and Sapphire knocked over the king, queen, and both of her biships to grab the queen's pawn in her teeth and push it out two squares. Again, a legal move. He set the pieces back up and responded by moving his king's pawn, and then she picked up the queen's bishop and knocked over the queen and the pawns in the middle of the board to put the bishop in a position where it was defended by the knight she'd placed earlier. Again, a legal move, and this time she had set the piece in a position that made one sacrifice to take the piece. Her moves didn't have any kind of unifying theme behind them, Tarrin realized, but two things were clear. Sapphire had learned the rules governing the movement of the pieces by watching Tarrin and Kimmie, and she had remembered them well enough to apply them in this little test. He didn't think she had a grasp of the underlying strategy of the game, but it was clear to him that Sapphire had learned something that an animal should not be capable of understanding.

  Amazing. Sapphire was smarter!

  "Sapphire!" Tarrin said in wonder, reaching over and stroking her head gently. "I'm impressed, little one!" He laughed and reached over the board, picking her up and then holding her at arm's length over his head. "I'm going to see if I can't teach you the Sulasian tongue, by beautiful little drake," he cooed to her. "You may not be able to speak it, but it would be incredible if you could understand it."

  She chirped fondly to him as he cuddled her to his chest, stroking her smooth scales gently.

  Kimmie returned with a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses. She looked at him cuddling the drake, then raised an eyebrow and gave him a quirky smile. "Should I leave you two alone?" she asked.

  "I have to show you this, Kimmie," he said immediately, putting Sapphire back down on her side of the chessboard. "Alright now, Sapphire, try not to knock everything over this time." He reached over and moved his pawn up another square, then motioned to the drake.

  Sapphire padded back and forth as she looked at the board, then moved her queen's knight out of the back row in her jaws, setting it delicately down on the board without knocking over the pieces.

  "She must have seen me do that," Kimmie said, setting the wine and glasses down on the tiny table that held Sapphire's bed.

  "Kimmie, she's made all the moves on her side of the board," Tarrin told his mate immediately, moving out his queen to threaten her queen's knight. Sapphire looked at the board, and then she grabbed the king in her teeth and moved it beside the rook, then moved the rook to the opposite side of the king.

  Sapphire had castled!

  "She moved two at once," Kimmie said curiously. "Isn't that that that fortress move?"

  "Castle," he said, staring intently at his drake. Tarrin moved his queen out and took the queen's knight, and Sapphire, being careful not to knock over the pieces by craning her neck over the board, grabbed his queen and pulled it off the board, then moved one of her pawns into the square it occupied. She understood that well enough!

  "Did she just take your queen?" Kimmie asked in wonder.

  "She did, and it was a legal move," Tarrin told her with a broad smile. "Kimmie, Sapphire was affected by the birth of the sixth sui'kun alot more than we thought. She's smarter now. Just look at what she's learned, just by watching us! Can you imagine what else she's learned while she's watched us, or watched the crew or our friends? She sits up in the rigging and does nothing but watch us, ever since the birth."

  "I'll be dipped in hogfat," Kimmie said in wonder, then she laughed. "Sapphire, you little sneak!"

  The drake actually looked a little contrite. But she seemed calm, as if it had been her intention to show them that she was smarter than they thought.

  "I'm going to teach her Sulasian," Tarrin told her. "Want to help?"

  "Why not?" Kimmie laughed. "But we really should teach her a much more elegant language, like Torian."

  "You're biased."

  "So are you," she grinned. "Want to compromise and teach her something else?"

  "No, let's stick with what everyone around here commonly speaks."

  "Then we should teach her Wikuni."

  "Ah, no. Right now, I think Sulasian will be enough for her to handle. Besides, it'll be good practice for us. Teaching her will be like teaching an infant. We need to learn that, for when your baby comes."<
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  "Well, when you say it that way, it sounds like a good idea," she said with a gentle smile. "But you know it's going to take a while, and we'll be very busy soon enough."

  "I forgot about that," he said with a brooding frown. "Well, we could cheat, I suppose."

  "Use magic on her? Well, that may work, but she's an animal, Tarrin. It may not be healthy. Besides, you'll have to wait until we get out of this magical void."

  Tarrin reached over the board and picked up his drake, scratching her between her horns in the way that she so loved, which made her chirp contentedly and lean her head against his chest. "My little Sapphire is a smart little drake," he cooed to her. "Then again, maybe I should talk to her a little more maturely," he chuckled.

  "She may be smarter, but it's unformed intelligence," Kimmie reminded him. "You teach an infant with baby talk, and besides, she likes it when you pay attention to her that way."

  "She does at that," Tarrin agreed, cuddling the drake to his chest.

  "You know, I suddenly feel a bit embarassed," Kimmie laughed. "She's been in this cabin with us since we left Wikuna. She's overheard all our secrets, and she's probably been watching us when we make love. I feel violated," she winked.

  "Like a Were-cat female could ever feel violated," Tarrin scoffed. "As to the secrets, well, I don't think she remembers things she overheard before the birth quite the same way she does now, and even if she does remember, I doubt she'd go off and blab them to the ship. Even if we teach her Sulasian, the shape of her mouth won't let her speak it very well. She'd be very hard to understand."

  "Maybe. We'll see," she said, picking up the chessboard and setting it on the floor after putting the pieces in a small canvas pouch. "But if Wikuni sailors start coming up and pulling on my tail, I'll know who to blame."

  Kimmie found it very pleasurable when Tarrin pulled gently on her tail. He wasn't quite sure why she did, but then again, Jesmind liked it when he bit her neck. He guessed that every Were-cat was different in their own ways, and that included what they found pleasurable and what they didn't.

  "You never know, Kimmie," Tarrin said with a sly smile. "Maybe I did it."