The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  "Alright, Kerri, what do we do now?" Tarrin asked, a little acidly.

  "Give me a minute," she said, her brows furrowing as the thought.

  The sharks complicated things. Without being able to send divers down to assess their progress, and also to place the kegs so they did the most damage, Tarrin figured that they would have to do things the way he first thought they would, simply try to blow a big enough hole in the reef by piling the kegs on the top. Tarrin wasn't sure that was going to work now, mainly because Keritanima didn't think it would. He had learned to trust Keritanima's judgement in these kinds of things, for she was rarely wrong. Keritanima's moment turned into an extended silence, broken only when the injured sailor was brought back aboard and tended, his leg showing a rather nasty bite made by somthing with very wide jaws. Keritanima herself bandaged the wound, apologizing to the sailor for sending him out there to nearly get his leg ripped off. The sailor seemed flabbergasted that the queen of Wikuna would bother to take the time to even check on his condition, let alone be the one to bandage his wound. And even apologize to him!

  "Alright, I'm stumped," Keritanima admitted after she finished with the sailor. "I'm not sending another man down there, not now that we know this area is infested with sharks. Anyone have any ideas?"

  "How about if we fill a longboat with gunpowder, take it over there, and then sink it?" Dar proposed. "Tarrin can blow it up, and we can hope there's enough powder in the kegs to break a hole in the reef."

  "Would that work?" Camara Tal asked. "You're the expert on gunpowder, Kerri."

  Keritanima drummed her fingers against her muzzle. "I think it would, but it would have to be one big keg," she said. "If Tarrin only blows up one, the others may not explode underwater. I've never seen or heard of anyone trying to do this underwater before, so I just can't say for certain."

  "I can Conjure as big a keg as you need, Kerri," Tarrin told her. "I can make a barrel bigger than a longboat."

  "Alright, then, conjure us an iron barrel the same size as that, and then fill it with gunpowder," she prompted, pointing at one of the large water barrels that had been lashed to the deck to free space below. "That should be a good start."

  Tarrin did so, and then they lowered the barrel into the longboat. It was too heavy for the boat to carry the standard complement of six, so only three sailors ferried the keg over. Keritanima shouted at them from the bow so they positioned themselves in the general vicinity of where the first barrel was set and detonated, and then they struggled considerably in their task as they heaved it over the side, very nearly capsizing the longboat in the process. The iron barrel sank like a stone, and the longboat rowed back to the steamship. Keritanima ordered them to go behind the steamship, for this explosion would be much larger than the last, and the steamship would protect the boat from the wave the detonation would create.

  Once a sailor at the stern shouted that the longboat was tied up and secure, Keritanima looked to Tarrin. "Alright, brother, it's your turn," she told him.

  Tarrin reached within, through the Cat, and came into contact with the All. He did the same thing he did the first time, first getting an image of the barrel, then turn around and using that image as an aiming aid to set fire to the gunpowder inside the barrel.

  The water did nothing to muffle the sound of the detonation. An earsplitting BOOM shuddered the ship, the shockwave of it actually pushing the ship back as a column of water rocketed into the air, sending huge boulders of reef stone flying in every direction. The ship pulled its anchor chain taut as a huge wave generated by the explosion slammed into the ship, making it rock dangerously and throwing almost everyone down to the deck as the ship bucked like a wild horse.

  They all stayed down on the deck as the last of the water and bits of reef stone rained down on them, and then there was a strange silence, the only sound being the water lapping against the ship. Then Keritanima laughed. "My, that was a big one!" she said cheerfully. "Can we do it again?"

  Tarrin looked at her, then chuckled ruefully. "Children and their toys," he told her as they all picked themselves up from the deck.

  "Alright, crewman, tell the longboat to row over there and see if that blew a hole in the reef!" Keritanima shouted at the crewman that had been at the stern.

  "Aye, your Majesty!" he replied with a salute, then leaned over the rail and relayed the queen's instructions to the longboat.

  They waited as the longboat rowed over, and the three men inside probed the churned, murky water with long poles. Encasing the gunpowder in an iron barrel seemed to have made the explosion much more powerful than using wood, despite the barrel they used being larger, and as they watched they realized that the iron-encased gunpowder had done massive damage to the reef. A huge hole had been blown out of it, nearly twenty spans wide, and it looked to pierce the reef's wall all the way to the other side.

  "It's jagged, your Majesty!" one of the sailors shouted up after they rowed back to the ship. "It's roughly twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep, but it does go all the way through the reef. The problem is that it's narrow on the far side and wide on the near side!"

  "Very good, crewman!" Keritanima said with a smug, victorious smile at Tarrin. "Prepare to load another barrel!"

  "That's not big enough?" Tarrin asked.

  "Tarrin, we need about fifty feet of width to clear it safely, and the ship draws about twenty-five feet at the keel," she answered. "We need to widen the hole. I figure we'll have it blown out wide enough with three or four more barrels."

  "You're the boss," he said absently.

  "That's right, and don't forget it," she winked at him.

  Keritanima's solution did work. The crewman loaded another powder-filled iron barrel Tarrin Conjured, and then she had them drop it on the far side, where the opening was at its narrowest. The explosion of the barrel was no less spectacular than the first, and after the men probed the murky water with their poles, they announced that the hole was more or less evenly wide on both sides. Keritanima had Tarrin Conjure three more barrels, and they were successively dropped into the hole at the near side, the middle, and the far side successively, which systematically widened the breach even more and dug out its bottom. The five barrel bombs blew a huge, gaping hole in the reef, more than large enough for the ship to traverse safely.

  "Alright, Mr. Donovan, give me your slowest speed," Jalis ordered the engineer from his sterncastle window at the Tellurian, who had come up on deck to check on the progress. "And keep your men right where they can stop the engine at a moment's notice. This is going to be a tricky piece of navigation."

  "Aye, Cap'n Jalis," Donovan replied. "We'll creep through as slow as you please."

  Sailors lined the rails with long poles as the steamship very carefully, very slowly set its bow into the hole the explosions created, ready to push the ship away from the jagged rocks should it drift too closely to them. The destruction of a portion of the reef created a backcurrent in the water, as water flowed from far side of the reef to the near side, forcing Jalis to have the engineers increase the ship's speed. The ship nosed into the opening, then the new current pushed the ship back out. They tried again, this time gradually increasing speed once the steersman had the ship solidly in the center of the narrow channel to overcome the resistance of the pushing current. Tarrin watched with Dar and Camara Tal as the ship slowly traversed the dangerous opening, Jalis taking no chances with the ship as the men lining the rails kept their poles ready to push off the reef should the current draw the ship towards it. A man at the bow threw a weighted line into the water and called out the depth every few seconds, quickly reeling the line back in then tossing it out again as soon as he had the lead weight in his hand.

  Jalis' patience paid off, as the stern of the ship cleared the reef, and the ship once again was surrounded by nothing but water. All the sailors gave out a cheer when the captain announced they were clear, clapping each other on the back and putting their long poles away. Tarrin looked back to the reef,
seeing the surface of the water eddy as the currents beneath flowed through the new opening. The sun would be setting very soon, so the captain ordered the anchor dropped, preparing to wait out the night and set out again in the morning.

  "Well, that's that," Camara Tal noted, looking back with Tarrin. "The question is, what next?"

  "That's a good question. I wish I knew the answer," Tarrin grunted.

  It was another night of anxiousness, but it wasn't quite as bad as it had been the night before. The restless night caught up with almost everyone, and everyone, even Tarrin, had very little trouble sleeping that night. Getting past the reef relaxed everyone, for Tarrin was sure that the reef was the last obstacle the poem mentioned. They had cleared all the challenges, and now there was nothing between them and that strange blackness ahead, the place that all of them were absolutely convinced held the Firestaff, nothing but seemingly empty ocean. Tarrin felt that the hardest parts had been put behind them, and now it would be a simple matter of sailing up to the darkness and passing through it to see what was on the other side.

  The morning's mood was quite a change from the morning before. Everyone had been quiet and sober and serious the day before, but the mood among Tarrin's friends now was one of exuberance and enthusiasm. Tarrin wasn't the only one that felt that they'd cleared the majority of the obstacles, and though all of them knew that there could be more challenges ahead--the poem mentioned nothing about the mind-affecting magic, or the storm--they felt that they could overcome them. They all knew they weren't there yet, but for the moment, at least, all of them were celebrating penetrating the reef.

  The reef had quite a surprise for them the next morning. Tarrin heard the sailors whispering about it when he went up on deck and got something to eat, so he went to look. Needless to say, he was quite surprised when he looked back.

  The hole in the reef was gone.

  It was like someone had come along behind them and put all the rock back into the reef wall, leaving it intact and again representing a barrier to anyone that wished to cross it. Tarrin was a bit shocked to see that, for it had to have been a magical effect, but he felt nothing. He wasn't sure how it could be done, since only Druidic magic worked in the void. Was there a Druid nearby that was so powerful that they could do something like that?

  Though it was a strange and obviously magical phenomenon, none of the sailors seemed all that worried about it. After all, their queen had gotten them through it once before, so they could simply do the same thing again when they left and get through it again. What worked once would easily work again.

  The happy mood evaporated after the ship got moving, and the blackness before them began to loom. It loomed more, and more, and more, the darkness expanding to take up more and more of the sky before them, growing larger and larger. By midmorning, the darkness swallowed up almost the entirety of the horizon before them, a daunting sight to say the least. They still had no idea how far away it was, what it was, or what would happen when they reached it. The sailors got more and more worried as the darkness seemed to tower over them, rising high into the sky and consuming the entire view ahead. It was like sailing into oblivion.

  Just before lunch, Allia gave the call that they all had been waiting for. "I can see its border now!" she announced loudly from the roof of the sterncastle. "I can see where the darkness touches the water!"

  "How far away is it?" Keritanima asked loudly.

  "It is a good way inside the horizon," she called back. "It took me a while to understand what I was seeing. If we keep at this speed, we will reach it in about three hours."

  "Jalis, are we moving at full speed?" Keritanima shouted.

  "No, your Majesty, we're moving at three-quarters right now," Jalis called back. "Donovan wanted us to slow a little so he could do something."

  "Well, tell him it's over," she ordered. "I want full speed!"

  "Yes, your Majesty, full speed," Jalis acknowledged.

  The ship sped up a little after the order was given, and they all watched and waited.

  The darkness expanded even more as they approached it, as sailors moved jerkily and had trouble keeping their attention on what they were doing, as Camara Tal sharpened her dagger in preparation, the Amazon going down to change out of her leather haltar and coming back up with her breastplate on. Azakar did the same, going down and changing into his armor. Kimmie and Phandebrass went down and studied their spells, even though they couldn't cast them, and Dolanna, Allia, Dar, and Keritanima grouped together unconsciously, should they suddenly find themselves in a need to Circle. Miranda, Binter, and Sisska seemed the only ones unmoved by the situation, the mink Wikuni sitting sedately on a folding canvas chair near the bow, knitting away as Binter and Sisska stood silent vigil over the queen and her maid.

  After two hours, the darkness was a tangible, discernable wall. It rose up to dominate the sky before them, and Tarrin could see its edge where it bordered the sea. It was a wall of massive proportions, and as they neared it, he could sense its power. It was a tangible thing, he could feel, but what surprised him most was that it was Sorcery.

  It was a Ward!

  As they got closer and closer, he could make out its construction. It was definitely a Ward, the weaving of a Ward was unique, one of unfathomably complicated weaving. Tarrin couldn't make out a tenth of it, and the tenth he could make out he couldn't understand. Its construction was so vast, so complicated, so intricately detailed that he didn't think any mortal mind could have managed to weave a spell so unbelievably complex. Was this another spell of the Goddess? He didn't sense her unique signature in the weaving. There was a precise exactness in the weaves the Goddess wove herself that seemed to be missing from this one, but he couldn't imagine anyone other than the Goddess doing something like that. It was so big, so complicated, Tarrin couldn't even pick its weaving apart enough to understand just what the Ward was designed to defend against. It had to have a purpose, a thing it was designed to prevent from passing through it. It was the fundamental operation of a Ward.

  Keritanima and Dolanna began to get a sense of it as they got closer and closer, Keritanima's eyes widening and Dolanna putting her hand over her mouth. "Tarrin, is that Sorcery?" Dolanna asked in wonder. "I can--it is unbelievable!"

  "It's a Ward," he said with a nod.

  "Well, one thing's for sure, it looks like the void's going to end right at that wall of darkness," Keritanima said.

  Tarrin nodded. It was hard to sense through the Ward, because of its magic, but he could indeed sense strands on its far side. The Ward marked the border of the void.

  "How did they make it black?" Dar asked. "Wards are supposed to be invisible to the eye."

  "I have no idea," Tarrin said. "I can't understand a fraction of what I'm seeing. It's just too complicated."

  About a half an hour later, they reached the edge of the darkness. It was indeed a titanic wall of utter darkness rising up out of the sea. It loomed over the steamship like a Giant looming over a mouse, the sun preparing to pass behind it and leave the steamship in shadow. Jalis ordered the ship to stop about half a longspan from the edge of it, and all the sailors stared at it with wild eyes, many of them with shaking hands. Tarrin had to admit, it did look quite intimidating and frightening. They couldn't see through it, so they had no idea what was on the other side. It could be empty ocean, or a coastline could be lurking mere longspans on the other side of that wall of darkness.

  "Amazing," Dolanna said. "We know it is shaped like a dome because we could see it as we approached. But this close, it looks like a flat wall."

  "Well, the water is passing through it," Keritanima said, pointing to where the waves disappeared into the darkness. "That's a start."

  "What are we going to do now?" Dar asked.

  "We can't try to go through it until we know what the Ward was designed to stop, and what steps it takes," Dolanna said. "If that is a killing Ward, the last thing we want to do is sail through it."

  "Good point," Dar
said, paling slightly.

  "Well, Tarrin, feel like a little ride?" Keritanima asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You, me, and Dolanna are going over there in a longboat," she told him. "I think between the three of us, we can figure out what the Ward does."

  "It's a start," he mirrored her former words.

  The longboat was lowered, but not after a heated fight between Jalis and Keritanima. Jalis wasn't about to let the queen run off into an unknown, dangerous situation, but Keritanima wasn't about to stay behind. Jalis was almost treasonous, threatening to put Keritanima in irons for her own good, then Keritanima countered by telling him that if he tried that, he'd be swimming home. Jalis lost in the end, simply because Keritanima pulled rank on him, but he did manage to get her to agree to take a full crew armed with muskets as a precaution. Binter also accompanied them, his huge hammer in his hands and ready to defend the queen from whatever may jump out of the darkness to attack them.

  The longboat rowed up to the wall of darkness carefully, slowly, and then the sailors pulled in the oars and dropped a sea anchor to try to keep the ship stationary. All three of the Weavespinners leaned towards the Ward, an inky wall of ultimate blackness, and they tried to understand what it was and what it did. That much closer to it, Tarrin could make out its weaving much better, but it was still an unbelievably complicated, multi-layered weave of stunning proportions, and its function was hidden within its mind-boggling complexity. After nearly a half an hour of quiet, intense study, Tarrin blew out his breath and leaned back. "It's just too big," he sighed. "I can see its weaving, but I can't make out what it's supposed to do."

  "Me either," Keritanima growled.

  "Nor can I, so I guess now it comes time for experimentation." Dolanna picked up an oar and pushed it towards the Ward, but it passed through. "So, it does not stop objects," she noted, setting the oar down and reaching out with her bare hand.