The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  "I'm more worried about how far away it is," Camara Tal answered, gripping the hilt of her scabbarded sword. "It's like a big piece of darkness torn away from the night, and it has no depth. It could be a few leagues ahead, or a few hundred. There's no way to tell until we get to it."

  "That's a scary thought," Tarrin grunted. "It may be a thousand longspans across. We may be hundreds of leagues away, but we're seeing it now because it's so big."

  "Possible, but if that were so, I think it would have to be made by a god," Camara Tal told him. That much magical power? No mortal could do it."

  "We may be dealing with something the gods left behind to protect the Firestaff, Camara."

  "I know, but that seems a little--"

  "Ahoy!" one of the lookouts in the rigging screamed. "Rocks ahead, Cap'n! It looks like a reef!"

  "Aye," Jalis shouted from the window of the steering deck. "Should we reduce speed?"

  "Aye, sir! They're about a mile ahead!"

  "Aye," he acknowledged. Tarrin didn't hear him give the order to slow, but he felt the ship start to decelerate. Tarrin moved up to the rail and peered ahead, and he saw the rocks. They just barely made it over the surface of the relatively calm water, a slight disturbance in the small, gentle waves in the very clear water. Tarrin looked more and more closely, and then he scanned his eyes to one side, realizing something rather significant.

  The reef extended as far as he could see to the north.

  He looked south, and again, the reef extended as far as he could see to the south.

  "It's continuous," Camara Tal said sourly, scanning the reef with her eyes. "I don't see a break in it anywhere."

  "Allia!" Tarrin shouted. "Can you see a hole in it?"

  "No, brother!" she shouted back to him. "It goes as far as I can see in both directions!"

  The ship came to a gentle stop just in front of the reef. It sat just under the water, a strange corrugated jumble of stones that looked covered with sea creatures. The top of the reef wasn't level, and knobs and protrusions rose out of the water, lapped by the gentle action of the waves. Tarrin saw a strange star-shaped creature that was almost five spans across creeping over the surface of one of those jutting rocks, the water lapping against it gently as it slithered over the wet surface of the dark grayish stone. All of them gathered at the bow and took turns looking over the rail, down at the reef. It rose out of the water about fifty spans in front of them, but it rose up from the ocean bottom in a gentle incline, which put part of the reef beneath the ship. The water was very clear, and it let them look down into the water at an angle to see the part of the reef the sunlight could touch.

  Keritanima came up to the bow rail and leaned over it, looking at the rocks about fifty spans ahead. "Damn," she muttered. "I knew this was going too easy."

  "We need to find a passage through it," Tarrin said.

  "Maybe we could have Sapphire fly out and see if she can see a break in the reef," Kimmie offered. "You said you could use Druidic magic to talk to her."

  "I could, but I don't want her going too far," Tarrin said. "Since we don't know what's out here, I don't want some creature to swoop down on her when she's busy looking at the reef and eat her."

  "I know one thing," Keritanima said grimly. "We're close to land."

  "How do you know that?" Dar asked.

  "That's how," she said, pointing towards the blackness ahead. Tarrin squinted as he peered ahead, for at first he didn't see anything. But then he saw white flecks in the blackness, and once his eyes focused on them, he saw that they were birds. Seagulls. "Birds. Those are seagulls, Dar, and they're too close to the water's surface to be migrating. They're feeding, and that means there has to be land nearby where they can land and rest."

  "I didn't see those," Dar grunted, looking at the darkness.

  "Do you think we're close?" Camara Tal asked.

  "I have no idea, but I do know that we can't be too far away for those birds to die of exhaustion before they fly back," she answered. "With this tailwind pushing them back towards the darkness, they could come out a long way." She snorted. "But let's worry about one thing at a time. We have to get past this reef."

  "Anyone have any bright ideas?" Tarrin asked.

  "What else can we do, brother?" Allia asked. "We must find an opening."

  "I say, that's rather narrow thinking," Phandebrass said. "We have three options, we do. We can find a way around it, we can try to go over it, or try to go through it, we can."

  "And just how would we go over it?" Keritanima asked. "Or through it?"

  "Over it would be easy, it would," he said. "We just make a wave that carries the ship over the top."

  "And what happens if the ship bottoms out on the reef in the process?" the Wikuni asked sharply.

  "Well, we just don't do that," Phandebrass replied.

  Keritanima growled audibly and glared at him. "We should rephrase. Anyone have any ideas that work?"

  "Without magic, our options are rather limited," Dolanna said, leaning over the rail and looking down.

  Jalis came over to them and saluted the queen sharply. "The lookouts can't find a break in it, your Majesty. Before I just pick a direction and start moving, I thought you may want to decide which direction we go in."

  "How far does this reef go?" Dar asked. "No, I mean how far do they usually go?"

  "There's a reef in Valkar that extends for over a thousand miles," Jalis told him. "It makes the northern marches of the west coast of the continent unreachable. I've seen reefs as short as a few feet, and as long as a thousand miles, lad. There's just no telling until we find its edge, or find a hole in it."

  "How long is a mile again, Kerri?" Dar asked.

  "He means about three hundred leagues or so," Keritanima answered.

  Dar whistled. "That'll take us days to cross, if it's really that long."

  Tarrin looked down at the reef, considering. It looked natural, and it probably was, but he had the sneaking suspicion that this was another obstacle deliberately set down to hinder anyone from reaching the Firestaff. If Jalis was right and there was no way to tell how long it would take them to go around it, it would mean that they would lose precious time. Days, maybe even rides of time lost as they searched for a channel through the reef, or its end.

  Tarrin looked at the reef, tuning out his friends as they debated what to do. Could this be the test the poem talked about? Where twenty may try, but only one would succeed? Of course, that reference of twenty was probably a metaphor, or just thrown in there to keep the structure of the poem consistent. If there was a one to reference, now was a good time. Of the eight magic-users in their group, only Tarrin had access to any form of magic at all. He was the only one left that could do anything about this challenge from a magical standpoint.

  But what could he do? Triana and Sathon had never taught him spells to pick up ships and carry them over a reef. Even if he tried, he seriously doubted he'd live long enough to get the spell going. Doing something like that would take an incredibly powerful Druid to accomplish, someone like Triana. Tarrin knew already that he just didn't have the power to use Druidic magic to move the ship over the reef.

  But as Phandebrass said, he was thinking narrow. The problem presented was an obstacle preventing the ship from moving forward. The two most common means of dealing with an obstacle that hindered progress were to either avoid the obstacle, or remove the obstacle. Tarrin couldn't avoid the obstacle, meaning he couldn't pick up the ship and get it over the reef, but he might be able to remove the obstacle. that would mean moving the reef, or at the very least, opening a hole in it wide and deep enough for the ship to pass through safely.

  That may be possible. Tarrin mulled over how he may go about that using Druidic magic. He could part the stone using Druidic magic, that was an option. Part it like opening drapes. He could cut the stone, or he could use Druidic magic to pulverize it, change it into sand and let the ocean carry the sand away. He could try to use the ocean itself to
ram the reef and break a hole in it as well, but that would take a whole lot of power, and he doubted he'd have the ability to use a spell like that.

  Other than that, he couldn't really think of other ways to open the reef, at least not things that he would be able to do. There were any number of easy ways to open the reef that would get him killed in the process. He needed a way to affect a large amount of stone, yet do it in such a way that it made it a very easy spell to cast. Tarrin crossed his arms and glanced at a bit of motion, seeing a lynx Wikuni sitting on the barrel of one of the cannons lashed to the deck, staring at the reef--

  --cannons. Cannons!

  "Kerri," he said quickly, "how much gunpowder do we have on board?"

  "About--that won't work, brother," she warned. "That's the first thing I thought of."

  "What won't work?" Dar asked.

  "Using the gunpowder to blow a hole in the reef," she answered. "The problem is that the reef is under water, and we don't have any way to ignite the kegs if they're under water. Just putting the kegs on top of the reef won't be enough, because they won't blow out a deep enough hole for the keel to get through." She grunted. "Besides, I don't think we have enough gunpowder in the first place. Donovan only let them bring on four kegs. That's enough to fire these cannons about five times each."

  "Can you conjure gunpowder, Tarrin?" Kimmie asked.

  "Easily," he answered.

  "Tarrin, we're in a void," Keritanima told him. "We can't use magic, remember?"

  "We can't use Sorcery," he said sharply. "Or Priest or Wizard magic. You forget, sister dear, I also happen to be a Druid."

  Keritanima looked at him, then she laughed brightly. "I completely forgot! You can use Druidic magic in this void?"

  "Yes," he assured her. "The All is everywhere. Nothing can block Druidic magic. The only thing I need to know if the kegs will explode. Will they explode if they're under water, Kerri?"

  "I really don't know," she said with a sudden laugh. "But we'll find out, won't we?"

  Tarrin thought it would be as easy as wedging the kegs into the reef, but Keritanima disabused him of that notion quickly. The first thing she did was send two sailors over to the reef in a longboat to see how thick the reef was on its far side. Then she had them take careful measurements of the reef's thickness at various depths, a task that required them to dive into the water with long poles that stuck up out of the water, as men on the ship gauged the distance between the poles visually. After she had the thickness of the reef, she sat down with a piece of paper and did some mathematical calculations. Tarrin didn't understand what she was doing, and she wouldn't answer him while she was doing it.

  After about an hour, she finally finished what she was doing and pulled Tarrin aside. "We don't have enough gunpowder," she announced. "We'll need at least three more kegs."

  "It took you three hours to figure that out?" Tarrin asked, a bit impudently.

  "Would you rather have just stuck the kegs in the rocks and blown them up, then merrily rip the bottom out of my ship as we tried to squeeze through a hole that wasn't big enough?" she countered sharply.

  "It would have worked," he protested. "We just have to keep doing it until we have a big enough hole."

  "And it would take three times as long as my way," she snapped. "My way, we spend a little time now to avoid wasting alot of time later. I know how much gunpowder we need and where to put it. We can blow a hole big enough for the ship in about two hours, where you'd have us out here tossing kegs of gunpowder over the rail for days!"

  "Two hours?" Tarrin asked.

  "Two hours," she said. "We should have a hole open by sunset. We can slip through it and anchor to the reef overnight, and set out in the morning."

  "Well, if you say two hours, then I guess we'll trust you, Kerri," he acceded.

  "Thank you," she said with an edge in her voice, stalking away.

  Keritanima issued her orders, and her sailors carried them out quickly. The steamship backed up until it was about a quarter of a longspan off from the reef, then dropped its anchor. After that, a longboat set out with a single keg of gunpowder aboard, and two of her best swimmers, the same two that did the measuring of the reef with the poles, pulled the keg overboard. They tied lead weights to it, then slipped beneath the waves to place it where Keritanima had told them to place it. They were down for a very long time, and for a moment Tarrin thought they drowned, but then both of them surfaced, and then were pulled back aboard the longboat. As the four sailors that had ferried them over rowed back towards the steamship, Keritanima pulled Tarrin to the bow and told him what to do.

  "They put the keg about twenty spans down," she told him. "They were supposed to wedge it in a crevice in the side of the reef. Can you find it and blow it up from here, or do you need to get closer?"

  "I can do it from here," he said, peering into the water. He really didn't need to see it, for the All would do his aiming for him. But a good look at the keg would help him immensely. Druidic magic was heavily keyed to images, and the sharper and more detailed--and more accurate--his image, the better chance the spell would work as he desired. He already knew exactly how to use the magic to blow up the keg. Gunpowder exploded when exposed to fire, so all he had to do was create a lick of flame inside the kegs. The kegs were waterproof, which would keep the water from dousing the flame, but that was a moot point. Tarrin had seen gunpowder explode before, when Keritanima had hit the powder magazine of Sheba's pirate ship with her magic. That created an explosion that blew the pirate ship into a thousand little pieces. The instant the fire touched the gunpowder, it would cause the whole keg to explode. The water wouldn't really do anything except muffle the sound of the explosion.

  "Not yet!" Keritanima said quickly. "Let my men get the longboat back over here and tie it to the steamship. That's a pretty big keg, and it should make quite a shockwave. I don't want them getting hurt."

  Tarrin nodded, and as he waited for the longboat to row back over. After about five minutes, the longboat was aside the steamship, tying a rope to the anchor chain and waving up to the sailors above that they were ready.

  Tarrin stood by the bow, closed his eyes, and began. He reached within, through the Cat, and made a connection to the endless power of the All. It felt warm and comforting to him, welcoming him and offering to him its power. Tarrin had already worked out how he was going to perform this task, and so his image and his intent were already prominent in his mind. He would do it in two stages. The first was a spell not of image but of intent, and that intent was to be able to see in his mind's eye an image of where the gunpowder keg was. The All responded to his request, showing him an image of the keg, with its lead weights tied around its girth, stuck in a wide crevice in the reef about twenty or so spans deep, with the sunlight shining on it in scillinting waves as the surface of the water refracted the sunlight penetrating it. Once he had that image, he distanced himself from the All and then touched it again; a Druid couldn't cast successive spells on one touch of the All, for the All would contaminate the spell cast beforehand with the new image and intent the Druid used. The new spell would conflict with the image and intent which had created the first one, causing unpredictable and often deadly results. It was the Druidic version of a Wildstrike. Sarraya had been very careful to drill that into him. To keep the mind clear of everything but the image and the intent while actively touching the All. Stray thoughts introduced variables into the formula, and the All was notorious about interpreting those unwanted thoughts or images in ways that were often quite deadly for the Druid and everyone around him. Once he felt the All touch him through the Cat, he pushed the image of the keg into the forefront of his mind, and then formed the intent that a small flame come to life within the interior of the keg. The All responded to him, seeing his image and reading his intent, then carrying out his desire.

  The effect was immediate and dramatic. A white geyser of water erupted from the surface of the water, hurling bits of rock out the column of water,
and a dull boom rocked the ship. Spraying seawater, like rain, and small bits of the reef stone pattered onto the deck of the steamship, as well as a few fish and sea animals that looked like aquatic scorpions.

  "Nice," Kimmie mused, wiping the water off her face.

  "I say, that was interesting," Phandebrass said in agreement. "I wonder if I could design a spell that would duplicate the effect. I could call it Phandebrass' Amazing Detonation, I could."

  "Is that it?" Tarrin asked.

  Keritanima shook her head. "Now my divers go see how much damage it did, and when they're done, they'll set another keg. It's going to take us a while to blow a hole through that, brother. It may look narrow at the surface, but it's actually pretty thick thirty spans down."

  They waited as the longboat rowed back over to the reef, rowing out into water that had become cloudy with the explosion stirring up the sand and sediment in the reef, and then the two divers slipped over the side of the boat and disappeared into the water. They were down only a moment before they broached the surface of the water and scrambled back into the boat quickly, one of them screaming loud enough for them to hear him all the way over at the steamship.

  "What's the matter?" Tarrin asked. They all looked to Allia, who went over to the rail and looked at the longboat.

  "The screaming one had something take a bite out of his leg," she reported. "I see dark shapes circling the longboat in the water. There, one of them just broke the surface," she said, pointing.

  Tarrin looked, and picked out a dark fish fin sliding back under the waves. "Shark," Keritanima said in concern. "They better get him over here quickly, so we can bandage his leg."

  "The explosion must have riled them," Azakar noted, then he flushed slightly and closed his mouth.

  "And attracted them to us," Camara Tal added, pointing. "Is it just me, or are there several dozen over there?"

  Tarrin looked, and he had to agree. There was an absolute swarm of the dangerous fish circling the longboat as the sailors frantically rowed for the steamship, and there were many more gathering in the murky water near where the keg was detonated.