The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  "Well, there went telling her," Camara Tal chuckled.

  "I'm glad she realized it for herself," Tarrin told her. "Sometimes she's as bad as Phandebrass."

  "Nobody can be that bad," the Amazon grunted.

  The easy mood Tarrin had been in once they arrived soured over the night, as the gravity of the situation began to get to him again, and the fact that they were there but they had to wait until morning made it hard for Tarrin to sit still or think about anything other than get going. He tried to imagine what they would find on that island other than the Firestaff; if the Ancients had left things behind, his wildest imagination couldn't fathom what those things might be. There may be old relics of the past, surviving five thousand years on the island. There may be ancient ruins to explore and strange wonders to behold. There was absolutely no doubt there would be danger, and Tarrin tossed and turned as he tried to prepare himself for anything from rampaging beasts to sinister magical traps. Kimmie got aggravated with him because he didn't want to get out of bed, but he couldn't get to sleep. He tried to settle down, but it was almost impossible for him to relax. Kimmie solved the problem by putting her claws in him, putting him on his back, then wrapping him up and promptly falling asleep with her head on his shoulder. Tarrin almost instinctively stayed still once Kimmie put her comfort at risk of his fidgeting, since he wouldn't do anything willingly to disturb his pregnant mate. After Kimmie got him stationary, Tarrin did manage to calm down after that, and part of him understood that he needed to be alert for tomorrow, and he'd be much better prepared if he got some sleep.

  The next morning, Kimmie woke him up before sunrise, and they quietly began to get dressed. Tarrin decided to give over on the shirt and wore his breeches and a simple leather vest that left his chest and midriff bare. Kimmie put aside her dress and wore a pair of stout undyed leather breeches and a similar vest, although hers buttoned up the front. She put her belt on over her breeches, with its several small pouches and little satchels that had her spell components within it. Without the dress on, Kimmie looked alot leaner, alot more dangerous, for it showed off her sleek form. Even with her pregnancy, she was still slim and supple. They both knew that she wouldn't engage an opponent hand to paw unless she had no choice, but those oversized paws with their long claws would make any opponent very wary to try to do so. One simply did not fight Were-cats at close quarters. Their speed and inhuman strength made it suicide for anyone not similarly blessed.

  Sapphire watched the two of them from her bed, not seeming to be very interested, and then put her head down and went back to sleep.

  Tarrin wrapped a paw around his much smaller mate from behind and put the flat of the pad on his palm squarely on her belly. "I want you to be careful," he told her gently, yet sternly. "If I see you get within paw's reach of anything, I'll kill it, then I'll kill you."

  "I appreciate the concern, but I'll be just fine, Tarrin," she said with a chuckle, turning and looking up at him and patting his paw fondly. "Trust me, my instincts to protect the cub are alot stronger than yours. Besides, I know there's a big, strong, handsome Were-cat male nearby to protect me if something endangers me," she said with a winsome smile.

  "Right," he drawled. "You'd scream like a human girl, then turn around and shred it like paper."

  "Probably, but you know I wouldn't choose to get that close to something."

  That made clear, the two Were-cats went up on deck, only to find that they were the last ones to come up. The sailors had set up a table on the deck, and Keritanima, Miranda, Dar, Phandebrass, Allia, and Dolanna were seated at it as the others stood near to it; the table could only seat six, and some, like Binter, Sisska, and Azakar, were too large. All of them were dressed for the situation. Keritanima was wearing a utilitarian dress, one of the ones Miranda made for her, one of simple brown with long sleeves. Miranda too was in a dress, one made very much like her queen's, but hers was a dark blue, nearly black. Dar wasn't wearing his robe, for the first time since Tarrin had seen him, opting instead for a pair of black leather trousers and a dark linen shirt. With his brown skin, it would allow him to hide in the dark better. Dolanna wore her favorite blue dress, but then again, she wouldn't look like Dolanna if she wore any other kind of clothing. Phandebrass had on his oldest gray robe, a very plain unadorned one with a frayed hem, but still insisted on wearing that ridiculous conical hat. Allia had cast aside the western tunic and trousers she'd been wearing and was again in her sand-colored, loose-fitting desert garb, even going so far as to put her hair up under her loose-fitting turban-like head covering, with her veil hanging from the side of her head. Tarrin hadn't seen her wear that head covering since he met her in the Tower years ago. Camara Tal was seated on a small barrel near the table, a plate on her lap and wearing her tripa skirt and her breastplate, as Binter, and Sisska sat on the deck close to the table and ate from their own plates. They wore their kilts and leather bandoliers, their massive weapons laying beside them. Azakar, decked out in his full plate armor, stood by the table with his plate in one hand as he ate with the other. Armor wasn't designed to let someone sit on the ground easily, so to save himself quite a bit of pinching in rather sensitive areas, the massive Mahuut youth had wisely decided to stand.

  "Did you lose a draw, Camara?" Tarrin asked as he looked them over, Sapphire flying out from the stairs leading below and landing in the rigging, beside Chopstick and Turnkey.

  "I got here last," she grunted, thumping her breastplate a few times. "I broke a strap."

  Tarrin fully understood why that would make her late. The leather straps and buckles that held a breastplate together were very carefully measured to fit the wearer. Camara Tal would have to find a replacement strap that matched the broken one, and then fit it onto the armor. That wasn't something one did in a slapdash manner, for the fit of the armor was critical to minimize collateral injury should the Amazon have to rely on the armor to protect her from a weapon's blow. The armor may stop a sword, but if it wasn't fitted correctly, the impact could break her ribs, or do something worse, like injure a vital organ. The steel protected from edges and points, but it was the careful fit that allowed the armor to absorb the shock without tranferring it to the soft flesh and bone beneath it.

  "Did you get it fixed?" he asked. "Need me to Conjure you one?"

  "I got it, thanks. I keep spares, for just such emergencies," she declined.

  "Wise," Tarrin nodded.

  "I'm glad you finally decided to join us," Keritanima told him. "Ten more minutes, and I was going to send someone after you."

  "It's not even dawn yet, Kerri."

  "I know, but I want to be on that beach before the sun's all the way up."

  "Jalis isn't going to like that."

  "Jalis can't tell if it's sunrise or not," she winked. "I'm going to tell him it is and leave in the pre-dawn."

  "That's underhanded, sister," Tarrin chuckled.

  "I'm a queen, Tarrin. We call it political savvy. Underhanded is a very crude term for it."

  "Correct, though," Dar murmured.

  "I hope you saved me some," Kimmie said brightly. "I'm starving."

  "You're eating for two," Keritanima told her with a grin. "That can't help but make you hungry."

  "Sometimes, I feel like an absolute pig," she said with a laugh as Allia handed her a plate with ham steaks on it. "I've never eaten this much in my whole life. And it's not even showing on me! I can't figure out where all the food is going!"

  "You Were-cats already eat enough for four people, and that's without being pregnant," Keritanima told her. "I don't know where it all goes on Tarrin either, but it must go somewhere."

  Tarrin reached down over Dar and picked up a plate for himself, then used his claws to slice up one of the ham steaks. "When are we leaving?" he asked.

  "As soon as we finish," Dolanna answered. "The longboats are already in the water. I am sorry, dear one, but we will have to row them ourselves."

  "You mean I'll have to row," he said with a sligh
t smile.

  "Blame me for that," Keritanima told him. "I can't put you and Zak and Binter and Sisska in the same boat. You'd sink it. So Binter and Sisska go in mine, and you and Zak go in the other. Since you four take up the most room, you should row."

  "I love it when she decides all these things without talking about it with us first," Tarrin noted to Azakar.

  "She literally ran my life when I was with her in Wikuna," Azakar shrugged. "I'm used to it."

  "I guess I can endure it this time," Tarrin told her.

  "Notice that Kerri put Tarrin in the other boat," Kimmie laughed in Dar's direction. "Knowing him, he'd capsize it just to get her back for making him row."

  "I can do that without having to be in the boat to do it," Tarrin told her. "But it would get everyone else wet too. I'll just have to find a way to knock her out of the boat by herself, that's all."

  "You wouldn't dare!" Keritanima flared.

  "Try me," he countered in a cool voice.

  The breakfast was consumed quickly and without much more conversation. After it was done, Kimmie and Phandebrass returned to their cabins to get small packs that held their travelling spellbooks, and Azakar, Binter, and Sisska shouldered larger packs with some equipment they may need for a trek through the forest. Food, water, tools, two large tents in case they had need to pitch them, large enough to hold everyone in them, flint and tinder for fires, a small hand axe for chopping firewood, and a compass. Tarrin didn't see the need for it, for he could Conjure anything they needed, but on the other hand, it wasn't a good thing to depend entirely on one person.

  While they were checking their gear, Jalis came from below decks and had one last fight with Keritanima. Actually, it was more like a lecture. He argued with her about taking sailors as guards one more time, but she refused, so he lectured her for nearly ten minutes about how Wikuna had finally gotten a capable monarch after centuries, and she'd be doing the kingdom a grave disservice if she got herself killed. Then he blamed her for the black marks all over his record when he went home and they found out that he'd gotten their queen killed on his watch, and how she didn't care about him or his service, lamenting the dishonor he'd suffer in the eyes of the Royal Navy and the kingdom as a whole, the loss of his pension when he retired, and his becoming a social pariah whose end would be met at the hands of a lynch mob. All in all, Tarrin was rather impressed. Jalis could moan and complain as good as any woman, hitting all the important subjects and overdramatizing things rather well. Jalis wrapped up his horrible end with about ten warnings for her to be careful, and he assured her that even though nobody on the ship could see much past their own faces, he'd keep the sailors ready to move in a moment's notice and keep the cannons loaded. Just in case she needed them.

  After everyone had everything they thought was needed and Jalis concluded his masterful tirade, they climbed down rope ladders and into the boats. Tarrin stepped down into his boat last, the boat holding Kimmie, Phandebrass, Camara Tal, Azakar, and Dolanna. Miranda, Binter, Sisska, Dar, and Allia had already gotten into their boat with Keritanima and had pushed away from the steamship. Tarrin sat down in the boat and grabbed the oars as Dar took the rudder, pausing to look towards the island in the dim pre-dawn light, with only the stain on the eastern horizon and the Skybands illuminating them. They were here, and in a few short moments, they would be landing on that beach and beging their search.

  It was time to get things done.

  The trip to the shoreline took longer than any of them expected, mainly because the two rowers and the steersman had never done it before. Both Azakar and Tarrin foundered around a little until they got the hang of the rhythm involed in rowing a boat, and it took Dar nearly five minutes to comprehend that if he moved the rudder right, the boat would move left. Keritanima shouted at them from her position at the stern of her boat, steering it, shouting and cursing at Dar while telling him over and over again that the boat would turn in the opposite direction from how he moved the rudder. The physics of that mystified the Arkisian for some reason, until Dar was fired from his brief stint as pilot and Dolanna took over. She showed him that he was doing it backwards, and he was forced to watch in defeat as Dolanna correctly steered them towards the shoreline, moving at a fair clip once Tarrin and Azakar managed to get themselves organized.

  It was an almost comical beginning to a very serious mission. Powerful strokes from the oars pushed their boat well up onto the beach, so far that Allia could step out without getting her soft boots wet. Tarrin helped Dar and Dolanna out, helped Kimmie and Phandebrass, then set his first foot down in the sand of this large, mysterious island. They had landed at the mouth of the very small, shallow cove in which the steamship had taken refuge, which was on the extreme southern tip of the island. The forest was deciduous, looking alot like the forest at home, even with trees he could recognize. There were oaks and maples interspersed with beeches, birches, ash trees, and an occasional pine. There were also rarer trees mixed in with them, blueleaf and redbark trees, and even a few sugarsap trees, trees that didn't appear as commonly back in Aldreth as they apparently did here. It was a forest like the forest of his home, and it had all the sounds and smells of a forest. They could hear birds deep in the forest singing and chirping, and Tarrin could hear a woodpecker beating at a trunk somewhere out of sight. He could scent squirrels even from the beach, probably because the adventurous rodents had probably come out to search for nuts. Squirrels were curious creatures.

  "Where are the drakes?" Phandebrass asked, looking around. "Weren't they flying around over us?"

  "They'll come find us when they get bored," Kimmie told him. "They're probably off exploring somewhere."

  "I say, you're probably right."

  Tarrin and Azakar pulled their longboat well up the beach, up to the treeline, then turned it over so it wouldn't fill up with rainwater while they were gone. Binter and Sisska were doing the same, and that gave Tarrin a chance to look beyond the treeline, into the dark interior, and feel just a little bit excited. Tarrin loved the forest. He grew up in one, had had a father who loved it and taught his son to appreciate it, and the Cat in him felt at home in it. He was anxious and a little nervous about what they were doing, but he was happy that it would be happening with trees around them. A forest, any forest, was the best place in the world. He could smell the trees and the brush, smell the squirrels, and rabbits, and the small cat-like creatures that preyed upon them. He could smell the birds flying in the branches, and smelled a variety of other animals that he couldn't immediately identify, animals probably only indiginous to this place. That worried him a little, because a scent didn't tell him how big the animal was. It would only let him discern if it was reptile or mammal or amphibian or bird, and some scents gave away if the animal was herbivore or carnivore in their textures. Not all, and usually only mammal scents did so, but every little bit would help.

  Binter and Sisska finished their task, turning their boat over beside the first, and they all gathered near the edge of the forest. They were all quiet a moment as they looked into it, as the first rays of the sun came up over the horizon, casting dim, eerie light into the wooded land before them. Somewhere, in there, the object of two years of searching was waiting for them. It was what men were killing for, what men were dying for, what entire kingdoms and nations were going to war over. It was what Faalken had died for, and what had nearly killed Tarrin more times than he could count. Everything that had happened for the last two years and more had culminated in that one moment, as friends and companions, siblings and mates, warriors and magicians, humans and Non-humans, all looked ahead of them and breathed a collective sigh of relief, as well as opening their senses and getting ready for the dangers to come. They all knew it wouldn't be easy. Getting there had only been half of the task. Now the final step of their long journey had arrived, the step that would put the Firestaff in Tarrin's large paws.

  The only step that mattered.

  "Are we ready?" Dolanna asked in a quiet, sobe
r voice, heavy with the gravity of the situation. It was more than a question of the moment, it was a question that made each of them look inside themselves, look within and ask that same question in the vaults of each's deepmost self. Am I ready? Tarrin asked himself, looking forward. Was he? Was he truly prepared for what was to come? Was he ready to face whatever untold dangers lay in wait for them on this large, mysterious island? Was he ready to face the formidable final guardian? Was he ready to take what the Goddess had asked, pleaded, ordered him to take? Was he ready? It was a deep question, whose answer was one of soul and will more than one of mental consideration. Deep inside himself, he did feel ready. He was ready to complete this mad quest, he was ready to take the Firestaff and either hide it away or keep it in the elsewhere, safe from any seeking hand, until its day of activation came and went. He was ready to finish what he started, to honor Faalken's memory by completing the quest that had cost his dear friend his life. Faalken had come back in Suld to save Tarrin, so he knew that his cherubic friend was out there somewhere, looking down on them and urging them forward. He was ready to get his life back, to disappear into the forests west of Aldreth with Jesmind and Kimmie and Mist very close to him, the mothers of three cubs, and raise his children in peace. That all by itself was the most powerful of motivators for him to finish the quest, to come back to Aldreth alive, to see things through to their ultimate conclusion. He had started this quest by seeing it through the eyes of a single child, his little mother, Janette. Now he saw it through the eyes of his own children, children whose lives depended on him to do what the Goddess had bade him to do. He wouldn't let them down. He would protect the world in which they lived, he would give them that world for their own by preventing its destructions at the hands of war between gods.

  Come what may, he was ready. Because now, he had more to live for than he did to die for.