The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  "Let's go," Tarrin called in a quiet, almost growling tone, lifting a foot and setting it down, crossing the boundary between sandy beach and moss-covered forest loam.

  The forest told Tarrin much as they penetrated it, moving steadily north as he kept his senses open for a hopeful detection of the magic of the Firestaff. He led the group along thick forest with plenty of undergrowth, vines and brambles and blackberry patches with their long thorns, following wide, well-travelled game trails. It was those game trails and the game that used them that told Tarrin things, things that only Kimmie understood as well as he did, because she was also a creature of the forest, bound to it and receptive to the subtleties of its whispering language. They had been moving north for about an hour or so, moving steadily and surprisingly quietly, with only Azakar's armor making any discernable noise. Tarrin and Kimmie had separated from the others for moments during that hour to scout ahead, moving with a sureness and stealth that made them perfect for the role. They were forest-born predators in their natural environment, and even Allia could appreciate that that made them perfect to move about in the woods unseen. The two Were-cats didn't separate far from the others, keeping them in sight, but the separation allowed them to make some very important, very critical observations.

  The forest game feared the party.

  That was significant. That was beyond significant. Animals that had never had contact with a specific type of animal may show wariness about the newcomer if it was much larger, but the game and the small cats and the birds actively avoided the party, as its scent was carried before them by a southerly breeze. The animals knew the scents of one race in their party, and they scattered as it approached. The only way the animals could react in that fashion was if they had prior experience with that particular scent, and knew it to be an enemy.

  That meant that there were either humans, Selani, Vendari, or Wikuni somewhere on the island. And they hunted the animals in the forest.

  In a way, that wasn't a very big surprise to Tarrin. He was positive that the Ancients must have put additional protections on the island aside from the guardian, and setting a group of people on the island and telling them to defend it from all invasion would be logical. It would have been a huge sacrifice on the part of those left behind, as they literally abandoned the entire outside world, but some men would be willing to do that to protect the entire world. Tarrin would do it if it was asked of him, as would almost anyone in their group. There could very well be descendents of those initial defenders on the island, carrying out the task that their ancient ancestors began, even to this very day.

  It made the two Were-cats much more cautious. Without talking about it, both of them pulled back closer to the others, close enough to respond to any threat almost immediately. Tarrin and Kimmie took the protection of the others seriously, so much so that Tarrin almost forgot that Kimmie was pregnant as she ghosted on the forest floor or went up into the trees to dance from branch to branch, moving through the trees with all the agility and grace of an Aeradalla. Kimmie may be pregnant, but nothing was going to sneak up on her in the forest, and Tarrin knew it. She was much safer out in the woods by herself than she was almost anywhere else. But Tarrin did keep relatively close to his mate, ready to head off any surprises that may come her way.

  Tarrin and Kimmie rejoined the others as they stopped briefly to drink some water. Tarrin kept his eyes on the forest as he handed the waterskin from which he'd just drank to Kimmie, watching two squirrels playing in the trees ahead of them.

  "There are people here," Kimmie announced bluntly.

  "You saw them?" Dolanna asked.

  "No, but I know they're here," she said calmly, capping the skin and handing it back to Azakar. The Mahuut marked the skin and hung it off the side of his pack, marking it so nobody else would drink from it. The many months of being together made the others rather casual about their Were-cat companions, but they still always kept the intrinsic dangers they represented firmly in mind at all times. They all knew that one mistake could cause them to become turned, and they all saw the horror that Jula went through. None of the humans among them really cared to go through that. "The animals in this forest know at least one of the scents in our group, and they're running from it. That means they've had contact with at least one race here."

  "Which one?" Dar asked.

  "There's no way to be sure about that," Tarrin said. "Unless you separated into groups by race and got far enough away from each other so that your scents didn't mingle. But that would be alot of time wasted, and be dangerous. We don't know what's out there, so we shouldn't split up."

  "You're off by yourselves," Keritanima said with a teasing grin.

  "We know what we're doing," Tarrin told her bluntly. "Besides, we're close enough to kill anything that may sneak up on you from behind."

  "Just because you don't see us, it doesn't mean we're not there," Kimmie told her with a wink.

  "The next time I take a bath, I'll be sure to check under the soap dish for you, Kimmie," Keritanima said with a toothy grin.

  "How far have we come?" Camara Tal asked, holding a hand-drawn map in her hands. Dar had been making it, and so far he'd done a fairly good job of it.

  "About three or four miles," Keritanima said. "About a league," she corrected. "Probably a little less."

  "This island isn't much more than forty longspans across," the Amazon noted, looking at the map. "Ten leagues," she corrected with a slightly amused look at Keritanima.

  "I thought it was more like thirty," Tarrin said. "Allia?"

  "I would put it in the middle," she said. "It is more than thirty, but I do not think it is more than forty."

  "Either way, we've gone about a tenth of the way in, and nothing so far," Camara Tal said. "If there are humans here, there wasn't any sign of them coming in. No villages on the coast--at least not the coast we saw--and no smoke from fires. Did you see any breaks in the forest, Allia?"

  "No," she answered. "But that does not mean that there are none. These wooded lands are deceptive. They can be but paces wide, but appear to be much thicker if there is something behind them that covers the gaps with darkness. Distances are beguiling within them and looking into them, even for one blessed with my eyesight."

  "We have a forest on Amazar," she nodded. "I know what it's like to travel in them." She looked at the map again. "We know that the volcano takes up the north side of the island, so we're not looking at too much wooded ground to cover. I say we march across the island right up the middle, and if we haven't found anything by the time we get there, we cover the halves one at a time."

  "That seems a plausible idea," Dolanna agreed. "It will be more efficient if we search by sections rather than attempt to cover the entire island in one sweep."

  When both Dolanna and Camara Tal agreed on something, it was virtually set in stone that that was the way things were going to be. The others didn't see anything wrong with Camara Tal's logic, so they agreed that that was what they would do. Tarrin and Kimmie led them out again, adjusting their path slightly so they would stay more or less in the middle of the island. It grew thicker as they moved into it, but the island was definitely longer than it was wide. At one point, Tarrin climbed up into the trees and looked out over the canopy, and saw that the island was about seven or eight longspans wide at that point. From the looks of it, it grew just a little wider as they would approach the center of the island, and there were some low hills on the northern side rising over the canopy's edge. Low hills that looked to be also covered in trees. The island had a good deal of area, but it wasn't so large that thoroughly searching it would be impossible.

  They encountered no dangers, no enemies, and no wandering monsters or nasties all morning, a fact that puzzled Tarrin slightly. He'd been sure that they would have run into something unpleasant by now, so much so that he felt slightly cheated and disappointed. He'd gotten himself worked up and prepared to battle foes to reach his goal, and he'd had no enemies to face so far. Th
at was a good thing, but the competitor in him was distressed that it had been prepared to face opponents that hadn't bothered to show up. Part of Tarrin, quite honestly, loved a good fight. It was his mother in him, he knew that, but truth was truth. Ungardt thought fighting was both a serious matter and also a casual sport. Ungardt fought one another at the drop of a hat, and that same blood flowed through him as well.

  Despite his diappointment that their enemies hadn't shown up yet, he was rather pleased with their progress. They'd gone not quite halfway, covering about eleven or twelve longspans from sunrise to noon, and had run into no traps, no enemies, no obstacles of any sort. They'd had a very easy time of it so far, truth be told. The worst thing that had happened so far was that Miranda had been pricked by a thorn when she got a little too zealous about reaching a particularly juicy-looking blackberry. Tarrin had had no change in his sense of the magic around them, meaning to him that they weren't close enough to their prize yet for him to feel its presence.

  They stopped for lunch, and Tarrin found it to be quite enjoyable. The forest eliminated almost all of his bad feelings, and had relaxed and calmed him in ways he didn't fully appreciate until he had a moment to stop and think about them. It was almost like coming home. Things seemed familiar to him, even if they were half a world away from his home...it just had that same feeling as Aldreth did. A place of quiet peace. That sense didn't seem to affect the others as much as it did him, for they were all still a little edgy and anxious. Everyone but Tarrin and Kimmie, and of course the Vendari, who never showed anxiety.

  "Where are those drakes?" Phandebrass complained as he accepted a piece of bread from Dar. "I know they know where we are."

  "They are probably out playing, Phandebrass," Allia told him calmly. "It is a large island, and they can find us whenever they wish to."

  "Whenever they get hungry," Tarrin added.

  "I should have left them on the ship," the addled Wizard grumbled. "Out having fun when we're on serious business, we are!"

  "Give them a break," Tarrin defended them. "They've been cooped up on ships for over a month! They need a little exercise, and they'll get it flying around the island. Besides, if Sapphire sees anything interesting, she'll probably come and get me. She knows we're out here looking for something."

  "How does she know that?"

  "I told her," he said simply. "I taught her some Sulasian, remember?"

  "I didn't think you taught her that much, I didn't," he mused.

  "She's not fluent, but she certainly learned enough to comprehend most simple things, and 'I'm looking for something' is a relatively simple concept."

  "Point taken," Phandebrass acceded.

  They finished their meal, and then set out again. But they didn't get too far, not even five minutes after starting, when Kimmie called to him from a bit further ahead. Tarrin caught up with her and found her kneeling on the ground, her paws flanking an obvious footprint. It was about the size of a human foot and had the same shape, but it rather narrow. Its depth told Tarrin that the maker wasn't very heavy, and its size and shape lent credence to the theory that its maker was a youngster. Adolescent, wearing shoes of some kind that had no hard soles. Maybe slippers. Tarrin was too far away to scent the print, but he was pretty sure that Kimmie already did that. The print was pointing in the direction in which they were going.

  "Well, here's our first sign of inhabitants," Kimmie told him. "It goes that way, and judging from the print, the maker wasn't in much of a hurry."

  "Is there a scent?"

  She nodded. "Human," she answered. "Male. It's about a day old."

  "You can almost walk across the entire island in a day, if you're serious about it," Tarrin mused, scratching his cheek with a massive claw.

  "Well, this person wasn't very serious about it," she told him, looking down at it again. "What do you think?"

  "It's the first sign, so this must be far out from their base," he reasoned. "It's a small print, so it's probably a wandering adventurous youth. It's pointing ahead, so he must have come out this far then turned around and went home."

  "Kind of like another wandering adventurous youth I remember," Kimmie told him, looking up at him with a grin. "You were almost a celebrity on our side of the Frontier, Tarrin."

  "I know," he grunted, squatting down beside her. "Triana told me all about that."

  "The only human brave enough to wander the forest alone," she continued. "You're lucky the Druid that controls that region told everyone to leave you alone. You almost wandered into a Were-boar's den once. He would have killed you if he hadn't been told otherwise."

  "Human youths are always too full of themselves to have much sense," he said in a self-depracating tone.

  "Be glad of it," she said seriously. "I think who you were was more than half the reason Fae-da'Nar accepted you. If the Druids would have ordered you killed, many of the Woodkin who knew Aldreth would have revolted. They all liked you."

  "I guess it's good to have friends," he said mildly, patting her on the shoulder. "Did you ever come to Aldreth, Kimmie?"

  "Once, but it was before you were born," she told him. "Mist took me there once right after she found me, to drive home the point that I could never go back. It was a rather brutal lesson," she sighed.

  Tarrin often forgot that Kimmie was so much older then he was. She looked like a woman in her twenties. But then again, Tarrin was only nineteen, despite the fact that he looked like he was middle-aged. With Were-cats, appearances did nothing to reveal age. Not even height was an indicator. Rahnee was one of the taller females, but she was only three hundred. Mist was five hundred, but was shorter than most of the ones that weren't even thirty. Then again, nobody could look at Mist and mistake her for a youth. Her body was all muscle, and her face was not the face of a child.

  He wondered briefly how Jesmind and Kimmie felt about having a virtual child as a mate. And Mist, for that matter.

  They waited for the others to catch up with them, then showed them the print. Tarrin told them his impression of it, and Dolanna nodded in agreement. "That does seem a reasonable explanation," she said. "I think we should be more alert. We need to find these inhabitants and talk to them, but I do not think we should tell them why we are here just yet."

  "Why not?" Dar asked.

  "Because they are probably the descendents of those who remained here to defend the Firestaff," she told him. "If we tell them we are here to claim it, they may attack us. So let us be cautious until we feel these strangers out and learn more about them."

  "You've got the right idea, Dolanna, but you're not going far enough," Camara Tal told her. "They're going to know that we came for something important, given what we had to go through to get here. If they ask, we'll be honest and tell them that we're looking for the Firestaff, but we won't say we know for sure it's on this island. We'll say that we're exploring the island because it's along the path to where we think the Firestaff is. We'll say we're here just to make sure that it's not here, and then we'll move on once we find out it's not."

  "A lie salted with the truth. That's the best kind of lie," Miranda said with a nod.

  "I say, that's quite clever, Camara," Phandebrass said appreciatively. "Deception isn't something you often see in Priests, it's not."

  "Neme doesn't restrict us from lying," Camara Tal said with a wolfish grin. "Sometimes deception is a critical element of a battle. If we couldn't sell the deception, we wouldn't be much good on the battlefield."

  "I'm surprised Kerri or Miranda didn't think of it first," Dar chuckled. "They're our resident sneaks."

  "They would have thought of it, eventually," Tarrin said mildly, giving Keritanima a good-natured poke with a finger.

  "Who says we didn't think of it right off?" she said primly. "I was just being polite and letting Camara talk."

  "Liar," Dar teased. "The last time I saw you being polite was when Rallix was with you."

  "Children," Dolanna chided them. "Let us keep our minds on the task
at hand. How far away do you think they are, Tarrin?"

  "There's no way to be certain," he admitted, rubbing his chin. "Until we see more tracks or find more scents, all I can tell you is that the maker of the print was walking when he made it, he's a male human, he's young, and the scent is about a day old."

  "We should slow down and go more cautiously," Binter said, breaking his long silence. He must have felt it to be very important. Neither of the Vendari would talk when they weren't in comfortable surroundings. "Until we understand the nature of our opponents, caution is only wise."

  "You're right, Binter," Keritanima agreed. "Let's keep closer together and move slower, but let's not fly off the handle and attack the first person we see. They may not be enemies."

  "Yes, your Majesty," Binter and Sisska said in unison, obviously thinking it to be a personal command.

  They started out again on the game trail, but now they were moving more slowly, and all of them were alert and observant, watching the forest around them carefully for signs of movement or life. Tarrin and Kimmie ranged ahead just inside their sight, pulling back enough to be able to respond immediately to any sudden threat on the group. They moved thusly for almost an hour, as Kimmie and Tarrin spotted more tracks on the trail. The human must have stepped onto the trail back where they found the print, and had been following it at a very stately, leisurely pace. Tarrin didn't feel very nervous over their discovery, mainly because he'd suspected that there had been people here all along. Or at least something not native to the island in any case. Dolanna's remark that they may be there to defend the Firestaff did worry him; he didn't want to have to fight people over it at this point, but he would if he had no other choice. They had no idea what kind of humans they were going to find, either. They could be stone-age barbarians, or as technologically advanced as the Wikuni. They could have magicians or Sorcerers, or may have Priests. Until they got a look at them, there was just no telling. The only thing he could tell from what he'd seen so far was that the humans wore shoes. That was the extent of his knowledge.