The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  "You mean other Sha'Kar survived?" Allyn said brightly.

  "I am not Sha'Kar," Allia told him bluntly. "I am Selani."

  Allyn looked at her in shock, then he gasped. "You're one of the Lost!" he said in amazement. "They survived the Breaking?"

  "Obviously," she answered him indifferently. Tarrin could tell that she was getting a little annoyed with the male, but she was trying to be polite.

  "But, but, you're a Sorceress! I thought the Lost abandoned the Goddess and couldn't use Sorcery anymore!"

  "Allyn!" Iselde snapped. "You're being insulting!"

  "I meant no offense," the male said immediately and sincerely.

  "I took none," she assured him.

  Iselde and Allyn led them onto a large, well-travelled path at the far end of the meadow that was paved with brilliant white stones, a road that meandered through the forest almost aimlessly. The path screamed of magic to Tarrin; he could feel its residual energy in the pads on his feet. It had been either created or paved using magical means. The feeling of the forest changed dramatically to his senses. Before, it seemed like a forest. Wild, grown, natural. Now it seemed more like the garden at the Tower, a pretty manicured place with no inherent dangers. The texture of the woods also changed, as all the underbrush disappeared, leaving open space between large trees, extending the distance at which they could see. Iselde continued to talk as she led them forward, repeating how happy she was to see them, and how they'd be so well received by the Elders and this person named Grand Syllis.

  After about ten minutes, the path showed them a break in the forest. They stepped out onto a grassy plain that ran all the way up between the forested foothills at the base of the volcano, a huge place that was about five longspans wide, taking up the entire central portion of the island. It was surrounded by forest on all sides, which was why nobody saw any signs of habitation on the way in. The ground wasn't flat, rising and falling in very gentle hills. But it wasn't the grassy plain that had their attention. The place was filled with buildings, all of them made in a sloping, elegant, almost impossibly rounded architecture. Large buildings had domes atop them, and there were elegant spires and minarets rising from the corners. Almost all the buildings were white or brown, with those domes serving as rooftops. There were white-stone pathways between the buildings, and fences contained clusters of buildings here and there. Everything was very widely spread out, and those ornate fences hemmed in vast tracts of land. Each fence held land in it that could at least hold the entire village of Aldreth within them. And those were the smallest of the fenced areas. Looking around, he saw that even the smallest building was at least the size of the inn back in Aldreth, huge constructions that looked grand and magnificent. Tarrin could see the denizens of this town walking along the paths, not noticing their visitors quite yet, Sha'Kar and humans alike wearing shimmering robes of every color.

  Tarrin looked around, and realized that he'd seen this place before. Long ago, just after crossing over, he'd had a dream about this place. About a town in a valley with no roads, were men and women in robes walked sedately, seeming to be ghosts to him. He'd seen it from the other side, looking down at the town from the foothills facing them, where it looked like a valley when it actually was a shallow depression at the base of the foothills. He looked up and saw the clear sky, remembering that in the dream, the sky had been black.

  "Tarrin?" Kimmie asked. He didn't realize that he'd stopped, and that the others paused to wait for him.

  "This is the place the Book of Ages is going to lead us to," Tarrin said, a memory of a memory tickling at him. Then he blinked. "I've seen this place before, a long time ago," Tarrin told them. "In a dream."

  Tarrin paused to rationalize that. And it made him remember the other dreams. The one of Keritanima standing on the mountain of jibbering skulls one whose meaning he wasn't absolutely sure about. The one about Jenna and the iron door had been about her crossing over. The one about Jesmind holding the blazing light was an obvious warning to him about Jasana and her incredible power. The one about Faalken and Jegojah was a flat warning about the last time they fought, when Faalken's corpse was used against him in an attempt to kill him. But what about the dream about Dar? About the shadow that was over him, meaning he was in danger? Had he countered that danger by having Allia watch over him, or was that too something yet to be? He looked at his young Arkisian friend and decided to pay careful attention to him, to make sure nothing bad happened to him. The dream seemed to hint that the bad thing would happen in Suld, but there was no telling what its true meaning was. There was no reason to take chances with Dar's life.

  "You told me about your dreams, but never about this one," Dolanna told him.

  "I'd forgotten about it until now," he told her, picking up the pace again when Iselde and Allyn paused to wait for them.

  Surprisingly, they didn't attract much attention outside of a few startled looks from Sha'Kar and robed humans coming out of gates along the stone pathway, as Iselde and Allyn brought them to a fenced complex on the fringes of the town's buildings, literally on the edge of town. She opened to gate with a spell of Sorcery, a surprisingly complicated weave of Air, Divine, and Mind, some kind of trigger weave that caused an old sustained spell on the gate to activate, making it swing open of its own volition. "Please excuse the rough appearance of our estate, honored ones," Iselde said, her face slightly reddening. "But we're a poor family."

  This was poor? Tarrin stared at the massive central building. It was almost as big as some of the manor houses he'd seen in Wikuna! It was surrounded by four other buildings, all of them smaller, one of them looking like a barn or very large storage building. All the buildings were immaculately clean, and the central building had a stained glass window over the front door that had to be thirty spans tall and twenty spans wide, an image of a Sha'Kar female garbed in a flowing yellow gown, her arms open in warm greeting. There were humans milling around on the grounds, and Tarrin realized that they had a farm behind the cluster of buildings, taking up a considerable amount of land. From that distance it was hard to see, but Tarrin could tell that all the humans looked thin, and they wore old, dirty clothing. Farmers?

  "If this is poor, I don't think I want to see where the rich Sha'Kar live," Dar said fervently. "This place is almost as big as a village!"

  "Now I understand how a thousand people can take up the entirety of this plain," Allia announced.

  As they got closer, they attracted attention from the humans. They looked like peasants from the West, wearing rough homespun clothes and looked to work hard every day to make their living. They had been working on the farm behind the buildings, looking to have stopped for lunch, and were now going back to their toil. They all stopped and stared at the strange group, and Tarrin realized that they were looking hardest at Azakar and Camara Tal. What made them so interesting?

  Iselde led them up a flight of marble stairs, to the huge set of double doors that served as the primary entrance, which was made of bronze or brass and had silver and gold etched into its surface. It was elegantly designed in a flowing, fluid pattern of lines, an abstract relief that surrounded a Sha'Kar glyph in pure gold that denoted a family name. Ai'shar. The door screamed of magic, and Tarrin could sense a Ward laid into the space which the door occupied, a Ward whose design was unknown to him. Allyn put a hand on the door and used a similar spell that got them past the gate, and the doors swung open by themselves, revealing an absolutely cavernous entrance hall that went all the way up to the domed roof above, as colored light from the stained glass window shone into the huge entrance chamber with its tiled floor and its grand staircase that led up to a huge balcony.

  Tarrin followed Iselde and Allyn into the chamber, and felt himself pass through the Ward. He felt it seek out something within him, and once it found what it was looking for, it retreated from him. Dolanna's eyes widened slightly when she stepped across the Ward, as did Keritanima's, but nobody else seemed to sense the presence of the Ward as they
all filed into the massive chamber. Iselde sent Allyn to find their parents with hasty, harsh words, and then folded her arms before her and waited patiently, that same bright, excited look on her young, pretty face. "Would you like some refreshment while we wait?" she asked. "Anything at all?"

  "We're fine," Tarrin told her as he looked around. The huge chamber reminded him of the RoyalPalace in Wikuna, but it was much, much more elegant. There were fewer works of art here, but the ones that were there were stunning in their detail or their complexity. Paintings seemed to ensnare the eye and make one's mind fall into the unusual abstract patterns, sculptures of nude Sha'Kar in beautiful poses seemed almost alive. One in particular of a male and female in some kind of dancing pose, the male holding the female over his head as the female arched her back and held her arms out, seemed particularly life-like, mainly because feathery, delicate stone strands of hair billowed out from the female's head. How did the sculptor manage to carve out individual hairs? There was a large open passage between the flanking staircases, and that was where Allyn went scurrying towards when Iselde sent him off. There was another similar passageway at the top of the staircase, as well as two doors on each side of the passageway along the balcony. The doors were made of a dark wood and gilded with gold and silver. Even the walls seemed unusual, the same white as the outside with a strange, warm light issuing forth from them as well as from the stained glass window above. The entire interior of the building screamed magic at him, from everywhere. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, all the works of art, even the doors. Everything either was permeated with magical energy, or the rich magical presence of the place had somehow seeped into the most mundane objects over the centuries.

  "Um, if you don't mind my asking, honored one, but what are those?" she asked, pointing at his shoulders.

  "They're brands, Iselde," he told her. It's a rite of passage among the Selani. I'm brother to them, so I had to accept the brands to be accepted by them."

  "You mean you let them mark you like a servant?" she gasped.

  "These are marks of my friendship to the Selani," he told her in a careful tone.

  "Why do you say that, Iselde?" Dolanna asked. "Is this how servants are marked among your people?"

  "Not with brands," she said quickly, turning to face the Sorceress. "But with a tattoo. The tattoo says who the servants serves."

  That seemed to get Azakar's attention. He stood up stiffly, and glared down at the small Sha'Kar in a dangerous manner. Azakar had once been a slave, and that made him very sensitive to such things. Marking a servant sounded to Tarrin alot like ownership. He couldn't say that he much liked what he heard either.

  Tarrin put a paw on Azakar's armored shoulder and exerted just enough pressure to make him pull back a little. The Knight looked at him hotly for a moment, but the calm expression on Tarrin's face made him regain his composure somewhat. Iselde, who had had her back to them, didn't notice the exchange.

  "Excuse me, I'm going to see what's taking Allyn so long," she said with a curtsy, then she picked up her layered skirts and almost ran off down the huge passage. They all watched her go, and when she turned a corner and disappeared, Dar sighed.

  "Is it just me, or is this place completely overwhelming?" he asked, looking up at the stained glass window.

  "The Sha'Kar were said to love beauty," Dolanna said, looking over one of the sculptures. "In this place, they have brought that love to life, it seems."

  "It's almost too much," Camara Tal grunted. "It seems like decadence to me. That, and that girl's attitude. I don't like it."

  "I think we found something we can agree on, my dear," Phandebrass said seriously. "Notice that she didn't even so much as look at anyone but Tarrin, Keritanima, and Dolanna? It was almost as if the rest of us don't exist, we don't."

  "She called us Tarrin's servants," Miranda recalled, putting a finger to her short muzzle and looking down the grand passageway. "It could be her excitement, but I'm not sure."

  "Excitement about what?" Azakar asked.

  "About Tarrin. Remember, Zak, he's something of royalty among Sorcerers. There are supposedly only seven sui'kun, and they were very, very important back in the Age of Power. If they've kept their customs from back then, it may explain why she seems to fixated on him."

  "What do you think, Kerri, Allia?" Tarrin asked.

  "I think you're rushing to judge," Keritanima told them. "Let's learn more about them before we start with the blanket accusations."

  "Our sister is right," Allia agreed. "Let us give them a chance. Their ways are not ours, and we may have as much trouble understanding them as they will have understanding us."

  "Well said, dear one," Dolanna nodded. "Given the diversity of this group, I am surprised that some of you are so willing to see the Sha'Kar in a darker light."

  "Maybe it is cultural," Camara Tal said. "There's just something about them that gnaws at me."

  They quieted when Allyn and Iselde reappeared in the hall, each of them holding the hand of a taller, more slender Sha'Kar male. He was rather tall, taller than Allia, but was very, very thin. Everything about him was thin, from his skinny arms to his long-fingered hands to his narrow face. He had white hair that flowed from his head in waves. He wore a white robe that almost radiated light, it was so pristine and clean, and the two youths were dragging him forward excitedly. He stopped dead when he saw the visitors, gaping at them, and then Tarrin sensed something magical ghost over him. He could feel the pull the man had on the Weave; he was a very strong Sorcerer. He must have probed them with his senses in some way. Once Tarrin felt the wave pass him over, the man almost made his children--if they were his children, for neither looked anything like him--fall down as he surged forward with surprising speed.

  "Goddess preserve me, you are sui'kun!" the Sha'Kar said in a lilting, surprisingly feminine voice. "Dear me, dear me! Please, allow me to welcome you to my humble home! I am Arlan Ai'shar, the patron of this humble estate," he introduced with a deep, sweeping bow. "You honor my home with your presence, honored one!"

  Tarrin was starting to get a little irritated with how all these Sha'Kar seemed to fawn over him. First Iselde, now this one Allyn seemed too dumbstruck to do much more than stare at them all. "You are Iselde's father?"

  "I'm her uncle, honored one," he said with another bow. "Unfortunately, her father died during the ceremony of ascendance." All three Sha'kar made a little gesture, tapping their fingers over their hearts. "May the Goddess bless his soul," he added. "Please, come in! My home is yours, honored one! Please, come in and be comfortable, and I'll send for the Council of Elders and Grand Syllis!"

  "Iselde mentioned this Grand Syllis. He is your leader?"

  "He leads the Council," Arlan replied. "He is the one named Keeper without a tower, but we felt uncomfortable with that title, so he decided to use the title of Grand."

  That made Tarrin mull it over. Just like Sulasian, Sha'Kar was a language where a word could have more than one meaning. Tarrin had been thinking of the word as grand, for it was the most common use of the term, but they were dealing with Sha'Kar who probably thought differently. That word also meant top, above in a social sense, and also, rather archaicly, Prince. But only if one was using the most extreme forms of formal speech.

  "Please, come in. I'll have your servants bordered in my servant house, and--"

  "I have no servants," he said immediately. "These are my family and friends. They will be treated as you treat me," he said deliberately and with great weight.

  "I--well, yes, yes of course, honored one," he said with a bow. "Your friends will be treated with all my hospitality. Please, come in, come to my sitting room and make yourselves comfortable. I'll have my staff bring you refreshments, and you can tell me what miracle brings you to us while we wait for the Council and the Grand to summon you."

  "That's fine with me, Arlan," Tarrin agreed with a nod. "Lead on."

  The three Sha'Kar started into the great passageway, looking back to make sur
e the twelve visitors followed them. Tarrin led his friends and sisters deeper into the house, a sneaking suspicion growing in his mind. He had the feeling that Camara Tal was right. There was indeed something about these Sha'Kar he wasn't quite sure he liked. But then again, he wasn't used to being gaped at and fawned over as they were doing to him, and he figured that that had to be what it was.

  At least he hoped so. Aggravating the Sha'Kar, who probably had all the information they needed, would not be a good idea. He needed their help right now, and if that meant that he had to endure their almost worshipful attention to him, then so be it. The only thing that mattered was that he left the island with the Firestaff.

  It was all that mattered.

  Chapter 12

  The sitting room in which Tarrin and the others had been placed was absolutely palatial. Keritanima looked decidedly jealous as they sat in a massive room with a ceiling that had to be twenty spans high, the ceiling painted in a starry sky portrait. Live plants, some kind of broad-leafed ivy or clinging vine, climbed up one wall, flanking a fountain that bubbled happily on the wall which the majority of the furniture faced. Soft light radiated from the walls to light the room, a room with no windows, a room that smelled strangely fresh to Tarrin's keen nose. There were more sculptures in the sitting room, to the sides of the fountain, which seemed to be the centerpiece of the room. The walls not devoted to its living display had art hanging from them. One was a portrait of five Sha'Kar, a portrait so stunningly done that the people on the portrait literally looked alive. Tarrin recognized Iselde and Allyn on that portrait, as well as Arlan, the two children much younger than they looked now. There was a female adult Sha'Kar with red hair, of all things, a very beautiful female with soft blue eyes and a warm expression. She had the two children on her lap, who were but cubs when the portrait was painted. A Sha'Kar male with blond hair had his slender hand on her shoulder, and the resemblence made it clear that this one was the father of the children. He was a handsome fellow, not effeminately beautiful the way other Sha'Kar males seemed to be.