The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  Before Tarrin could react, Dolanna reached out and tried to touch the Ward.

  His heart about leaped out of his chest when he saw that, but to his ultimate relief, her hand touched the Ward as if it were a solid object. She laid the palm of her hand against it and pushed, which only made the longboat drift backwards.

  "It looks like it's designed to act as a physical barrier to living things," Dolanna said. "Or perhaps certain living things. The birds we saw earlier may be able to pierce the Ward, but it obviously will repel a human."

  "Let's see," Keritanima said, reaching out with her hand. It too struck the Ward as if it were a solid object. "It's amazing," she whispered. "I can feel the power of it under my hand! It's incredible!"

  Tarrin reached out as well, his paw reaching out and making contact--

  --then it passed through! White light erupted from the blackness around Tarrin's wrist as his paw passed through the Ward, and he felt an blasting surge of magical power assault him, like white-hot steel placed into his paw. The power of the Weave conducted through the Ward, entering him, filling him to his capacity in the blink of an eye. Magelight exploded around his body in a blinding flash, startling two of the sailors so badly that they fell overboard. Tarrin felt paralyzed by the contact, unable to move, unable to do anything but try to fight back against the onslaught of magical energy that sought to fill him. At that moment, he realized that even a sui'kun could be destroyed by the power of the Weave, as its power sought to fill him to such a capacity that the energy reacted with itself and destroyed him. Clamping his jaws, biting off the tip of his tongue, Tarrin set a foot against the side of the lonboat and tried to pull away, but the Ward had his paw in a vice-like grip, like the hand of a Giant holding onto him, and he couldn't move it.

  The power became pain, a pain he had not felt since that day in the desert when Spyder had provoked him into crossing over. He could feel the power, feel its heat, and though the heat did him no harm, the power itself was starting to infuse his every cell, his every tiniest part. Tarrin's flesh and skin and fur began to glow with the same light as the aura that surrounded him as the power flowed into him like water, and he the vessel.

  Fight back! the voice of the Goddess reached him, though it was distant, fuzzy in his struggles. Fight back, kitten! If you don't master it, it will destroy you!

  Tarrin clenched his eyes shut and tried to center himself. Fight back. He had to resist the power, or take control of what was trying to send it into him. It was like a fight between Sorcerers, as one tried to overcharge the other and force him to let go of the Weave or be Consumed. His adversary was the stronger opponent, and that made Tarrin go on the defensive. He used every trick he'd learned from Spyder and through trial and error, channeling the flow of the power into a weave, a weave of pure, unmitigated power, and then he focused it in his free paw and drove it into the Ward, even as his free paw drove into the blackness. Tarrin used the power against itself, channeling what was flowing into him into an eruption of all seven flows, flows that radiated out from his paw. They flailed into the matrix of flows that made up the Ward, and whenever a flow made contact with a flow from the same Sphere, the two flows cancelled one another out. The Ward was attacking the integrity of Tarrin's body, so Tarrin retaliated by using the power of the Ward to fuel a spell that would attack the integrity of the Ward. Tarrin's spell slashed through the weave that made up the Ward as the flows Tarrin fed back into the Ward caused the weaving of it to unravel, as Tarrin's spell actively attacked it. It happened quickly, too quickly to follow, but Tarrin realized that he'd done serious damage to the integrity of the Ward around his paws, enough that he felt the vice-like grip on his paw loosen. Tarrin was about to jerk both his paws out of the Ward, but he felt the power roaring into him suddenly ease, becoming a trickle that he could easily control.

  The weave of the Ward actively altered, right around his paws. The black surface of the Ward shimmered like ripples on the surface of a pond, radiating outward. The ripples intensified, and then the Ward's blackness broke up, going from a featureless, intimidating wall to a barrier of black mist, its edge defined but its appearance looking intangible. The size of the disturbance was rather impressive, nearly a hundred spans high and a hundred spans wide, and Tarrin could sense that the dimensions of the disturbance were similar under the water. It was a circular area of change.

  "Tarrin, what just happened?" Dolanna asked fearfully, reaching out as if to touch him, but not sure if she should.

  Tarrin was panting to recover his breath. Goddess, that was close! He'd never been...manhandled like that before! Spyder's attacks seemed gentle compared to what he'd just experienced! Tarrin's attention was taken up by the Ward, and he ignored Dolanna as he tried to understand what had just happened. The Ward's weaving had changed, its fundamental nature altered, but he didn't do it. The Ward had changed itself after Tarrin nearly disrupted that parts of it he was touching, and changed itself over a wide area. Tarrin had done something to trigger this, a programmed response of some sort.

  But what did he do?

  Keritanima reached towards the misty barrier, but this time her hand penetrated into it. Her eyes widened and she jerked her hand out. "It felt like ants crawling all over me!" she said.

  "Tarrin, whatever you did, it has altered the Ward so we can pass through it," Dolanna said in surprise, putting her own hand in.

  Pass through it. Pass. Tarrin looked at her, sweat forming on his brow as he maintained control over the Ward as it still tried to fill him with power, the urgency of the flow becoming stronger and stronger every moment. The poem said only one in twenty could allow them to pass beyond the Weave. The reef wasn't the last challenge. This was!

  "It's starting to fight back again, Dolanna," he said in sudden concern. "I think this is what the poem was talking about. The Ward reacted to me when I touched it, and I had to fight it for control. I think I accidentally opened a hole in it when I managed to overcome its attack, but I don't know how long it's going to last."

  Though his train of thought was scattered, and it showed in how his words bounced around from subject to subject, Dolanna seemed to follow him. "This is why we needed you," she realized. "Only you could conquer the Ward and grant us entry."

  "Speaking of entry, we'd better do some entering quickly," Keritanima said urgently. "If it's starting to resist Tarrin, we can't waste any time."

  "That is dangerous, Kerri," Dolanna said. "We do not know what is on the other side."

  "We just have to show a little faith that the Goddess isn't leading us astray," she said with an impish smile, standing up in the boat and looking back to the steamship. "Tarrin opened the Ward!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "Get the steamship through, and do it now! He can't hold it open for very long!"

  Tarrin heard no reply, as he devoted more and more attention to the Ward, and how it was trying to overcome whatever it had done to itself. Tarrin could feel the weave try to realign itself the way it had been before, and he realized he had to actively put his paw in to stop that. He didn't know what he was doing, but he drew from the Weave through the Ward, using it to make indirect contact to the strands beyond the Ward, and quickly wove together a monstrous weave of pure Divine. He wedged that into the matrix of the Ward, locking the flows in place like nailing a wedge under a door to keep it open. The flows of the Ward resisted Tarrin's attempt to stop them, but the flows did indeed stop trying to rearrange themselves back into their prior organization, which would cause the Ward to attack him again.

  "Tell them to hurry," Tarrin said through gritted teeth. "I can't hold it open much longer!"

  Tarrin struggled to hold the Ward in its current state as the steamship's engine roared to life, audible to them, and it started surging forwards. Tarrin didn't look, didn't think of anything but maintaining his spell, struggling to hold the Ward open as the resistance it posed grew stronger and stronger with each passing moment. Tarrin's paws began to itch and got progressively colder as he k
ept the wedge in the Ward, prevented it from closing on itself and rearrange back to its former state. "Where are they?" Tarrin hissed, his tail sticking straight out as his body strained, almost as if he were trying to hold the breach open with his bare paws.

  "They're passing us right now, Tarrin," Keritanima told him. "Throw down a rope and pull us through behind you!" Keritanima shouted.

  Tarrin was losing. The edges of the altered Ward were beginning to collapse as the force exerted against him became stronger than what he could resist. Tarrin retracted his holding weave of Divine, pulled it down to make it more concentrated, and though he couldn't see it, the men on the ship did. They saw the misty hole suddenly shrink visibly, the top of it just over the top of the mast as the bow and amidships passed into the black swirling mist. Tarrin was forced to give more and more ground to the inexorable pressure being exerted against his weaving, being exerted against him, and sweat rolled profusely from his brow as he struggled to retreat to a position where his Divine weave could set itself and hold its position against the closing hole. Tarrin felt the longboat suddenly yank forwards, and the cold sensation passed through his body as the longboat was pulled through the breach. It lasted a long moment, and then he felt warmth on his paws, spreading up his arms, and then across his body. Tarrin felt the tip of his tail come free of the Ward, and when he lost contact with it, his Divine weave was crushed by the pressure of the Ward. From the outside, the effect was startlingly abrupt. With a sudden snap, the misty black of the Ward shuddered back into featureless black, and the hole Tarrin opened closed.

  Tarrin opened his eyes, letting go of the Weave and feeling his body throb a bit from the effort. From the inside, the blackness wasn't there, and he looked up into a clear, beautiful sky. He realized that the blackness was an Illusion, an Illusion that was only visible from the outside. The area inside the Ward was not a void; in fact, there was such a concentration of strands that it made his ears buzz slightly. The place had the same feel as the Tower of Six Spires, that same sense of magic charging the very air itself, but here it was even stronger. The power of the Weave litereally saturated the air, and there were so many strands that the ghostly sight of them almost threatened to overwhelm his vision, hide the physical objects that were behind them. It took him a moment to adjust himself to it, to remind himself to ignore the ghostly images of the strands and concentrate on the solid things behind them, things that became more easy to see and sharper as he tuned the strands out of his vision. There were birds soaring on the gentle wind before them, he could see, soaring over something that made his heart leap to see.

  It was an island. A very large island, with the towering cone of a volcano raising up from its north side. They were very far away from it, but even from that distance, he could see the green of the grass and the trees, could see that it was a lush, beautiful place. It looked to be about thirty longspans across or so, and its distance put it a few hours' travel away by steamship.

  "We, we made it," Tarrin said in relief, looking at Keritanima. But instead of seeing joy or relief on her face, she looked frightened. "Kerri, what's wrong?"

  "Tarrin? Hold on," she said, raising a hand. She caused a ball of light to appear over her hand, and she held it up to him. "We made it, didn't we?"

  "If course we did!" he told her. "We're inside the Ward, Kerri, and there's an island in front of us!"

  "How can you see it?" she asked, peering in that direction. "Tarrin, it's as black as pitch in here!"

  "No it's not," he protested. He looked to the steamship, seeing that they were lighting lanterns, and he heard them calling out to the longboat fearfully. What was wrong with them? It was broad daylight, why on earth did they need to light lanterns? "It's the middle of the day!"

  "Alright, one of us lying," Keritanima said sharply. "I can't see my hand in front of my face!"

  "Well, everything's as clear as day to me," he told her.

  "Amazing," Dolanna said. "Tarrin, you can see?"

  "It's broad daylight, Dolanna," he told her.

  "I can barely see you with Kerri's light," Dolanna told him, squinting in his direction. "It is like the air itself is swallowing up the light. I cannot see the steamship at all, but I can hear them talking."

  "It has to be some kind of magical spell put on us by the Ward when we passed through it," Keritanima said. "Let's get back the ship and see who's been affected, and try to come up with a way to counter it." She looked around. "Tarrin, I can't see the steamship. Could you guide us back to it?"

  "Alright," he said, shifting to Wikuni to adress the four rather nervous sailors in the ship. "Alright men, set your oars. The steamship is just a little starbord of us, about three hundred spans away."

  "A little more than hundred fifty feet," Keritanima translated for the Wikuni.

  "Let's go nice and slow," Tarrin told them. "Just keep calm and row steady, and we'll be there in just a few minutes."

  "Aye, sir," one of them said in a shaky voice. "You heard the man, set oars," he ordered his fellow sailors.

  The sailors rowed carefully, and Tarrin looked around. The island looked inviting, but this magical effect on the others was a bit disconcerting. Why hadn't he been affected? Had anyone else managed to avoid the spell's effect? Tarrin was a little surprised that it had done that, that it could affect everyone who passed through it, but there was no magical spell or effect that could not be countered or removed. They would just have to figure out what caused it and engineer a remedy. And now that they were out of the void, that meant that all of them, even Kimmie, Phandebrass, and Camara Tal, could bend their magic to the task. He was confident that this problem was an easy one to overcome.

  Tarrin guided them to the ship, looking at the island. He didn't feel anxious or worried anymore, at least not yet. For a long moment, he simply revelled in the fact that they'd made it. He was sure of it. Somewhere on that island, the Firestaff was laying, waiting for them to come and claim it.

  All they had to do now was find it.

  "Well, my friends, I think we are here," Dolanna chuckled. "You said there was an island, Tarrin?"

  "Yes, a couple of hours ahead."

  "Then that is probably our destination," she nodded.

  "Well, my friends, let me be the first to welcome us to the end of our journey," Keritanima said with a slight smile. "It won't be long now."

  "Indeed," Dolanna agreed.

  "Since I can't see my hand in front of my face, I think we could give this place a fitting name. Let's call it the Shadow Realm."

  Tarrin stood up and grabbed a dangling rope from the winch that had lowered the longboat, looking at Keritanima. If anything, he realized, it was a fitting name. An island protected by a dome of darkness, that cast shadow over the eyes of those who managed to pass through, making day seem like night to them. "It fits," Tarrin agreed.

  Soon, their journey would be over, Tarrin realized with a sigh. Somewhere in here the Firestaff was hidden, and all they had to do was find it.

  Somewhere in the Shadow Realm.

  Chapter 11

  The magic affecting the people on the ship did more to unnerve the Wikuni sailors than anything that had happened thus far. Tarrin had never seen a group of men more frightened and nervous than he saw that day, after they had brought up the longboat holding the queen. They stumbled around blindly, banging into things, and every time someone did it made everyone else even more anxious. He understood that their inability to see was the cause, that beings like Wikuni were so dependent on their sight that when it was taken away from them, it caused them to nearly panic. They couldn't see their own muzzles unless they had a lantern, and Keritanima and Dolanna told him that the light was swallowed up by the air, barely lighting anything outside of arm's reach.

  Tarrin thought it slightly odd that they would be carrying around lanterns, candles, and torches in the middle of the day, but to them, it wasn't day, it was night.

  Unlike the mind-affecting magic that caused the attempted mut
iny, this particular magical effect got everyone but Kimmie, Binter, and Sisska. Allia was similarly affected by the magic-induced darkness, as were all the humans and Wikuni. All of them had little doubt it that Tarrin and Kimmie were immune because they were Were, but nobody seemed to understand why the Vendari were also immune to the megical effect. The drakes weren't affected by it either, but then again, they were animals, even if Sapphire had exhibited more than animal intelligence lately. It fell to the Were-cats and the Vendari to clear the deck of most of the loose objects, clearing paths for the terrified Wikuni sailors and Tellurian engineers, who had been forced out of the engine room by the total darkness below.

  Then again, they weren't going to be needed. Jalis dropped the anchor, and Keritanima didn't argue with him when he told her adamantly that he wasn't going to move the ship until they figured out what was going on, and if they could find a way to fix it. Even if four people on board could see, nobody else could, and the two Were-cats and two Vendari couldn't run the ship by themselves.

  After Keritanima and Jalis made rounds to try to calm everyone down, giving the men double rations for dinner and sending them below to rest and stay out from underfoot, Keritanima gathered all of them together, even the bear Wikuni that served as the ship's Priest and Jalis, and they tried to figure out what was causing the darkness. The Wikuni Priest, Orlen, and Phandebrass cast a series of magical spells to try to discern the source of the magic, but their attempts failed. Dolanna and Keritanima couldn't sense the magic, which made it on par with the magic that had caused the mutiny. Tarrin couldn't sense much of anything with the powerful background magic that permeated the entire region within the magical Ward, a background noise that drowned out anything that wasn't stronger than the background itself. That meant to him that the magic had to be very subtle, very delicate, the same way that the mind-affecting magic that had caused the mutiny had been. Tarrin suspected that that was why Dolanna and Keritanima couldn't sense it either, but since they didn't have as much experience in using the senses to probe the Weave as he did, they discounted their own abilities and felt that they failed to sense anything.