The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  Tarrin got up and left the conservatory, paws behind his back and tail swishing lazily behind him as he padded off towards his borrowed room, feeling like it had been a very productive afternoon. He had quite a few observations to relate to Keritanima, and he had the feeling that he'd made progress towards securing Iselde's cooperation when the time came to ask her the difficult questions.

  He hadn't seen or sensed the invisible eyes and ears that had been watching him, the watchers in the Weave, lost in the strong background magic that imbued the area within the Ward. Watchers that had seen and heard every word exchanged between Tarrin, Iselde, and Auli.

  Chapter 14

  Sapphire was in the room when Tarrin returned, having come back with three letters for Keritanima, which had already been delivered. Kimmie was up, lounging in the bath with Sapphire sitting on the lip and talking with her. Tarrin heard some of their conversation when he came in, and he realized that Kimmie was pumping the drake for information, trying to figure out what had made her so smart, and trying to fathom the extent of her intelligence. She was asking questions of philosophy and logic, trying to expand the drake's mind and get an understanding of how she would act in certain situations. Sapphire's answers didn't surprise Tarrin, for they were in line with the personality she possessed before becoming intelligent. She was just like the Were-cats in that regard, her human-like intelligence heavily flavored by her drake's instincts. Even with a greater understanding of things, she was still powerfully attached to Tarrin, regressing to her drake state and chirping pleasantly as she jumped up into his arms, rubbing her head against his shoulder fondly.

  "How was the errand?" he asked her, scratching her between the horns.

  "Boring," she sighed. "I didn't want to tell them I could talk, since I think the Sha'Kar are watching them, so I had little to do. They know I understand some commands, so they managed to keep me there until the Wikuni that rules the others--what is his name?"

  "Jalis?"

  "That's the one. He wrote your furry sister-friend a long letter and had me bring it back to her. So did the human that rules the others, and that big one that looks like a bear, the one that wears the robes." She looked up at him. "Will you teach me to read?"

  "Sure, but you wouldn't have been able to read what they wrote. It was probably in Wikuni, another language."

  "I didn't want to read it. It's just that there are many things to learn in those books, but I have to be able to understand them to use them."

  "What books?"

  "The one that's the friend of the two males," she answered. I've seen him reading them all the time, him and Kimmie. I didn't understand what they were doing until you taught me to speak. Now I want to read them and learn what they hold."

  "You may not be able to read those books, Sapphire," he warned. "Those are spellbooks they were reading. But I'm sure Phandebrass has some regular books that you can read, and the Sha'Kar probably do too. So I'll teach you to read Sulasian, and I'll also teach you to read Sha'Kar when we teach it to you." He looked to his mate. "You look happy," he noted.

  She smiled up at him. "When I build my new den, you absolutely have got to make me one of these," she told him dreamily.

  "Make you a new bath?"

  "Of course. When we get back, I know you'll go back with Jesmind, but I won't go too far. I want our child to grow up with its father. So I'm going to build me a den just out of sight of yours, so my presence doesn't rub Jesmind raw."

  Tarrin was happy to hear that. He squatted down facing her, and she leaned back against the lip of the pool and put her arms up on it. She let herself float a bit, rising up in the steaming water. He looked at her belly, and saw that it was peeking out of the water above the rest of her torso. "You're starting to fill out, Kimmie," he noticed with a smile.

  She grinned at him, patting her slight bulge. "It's about time," she announced. "I'll fill up like a thin waterskin now, and do it quickly. In three months, I'll look like a human woman about to drop. I'll give birth about a month later."

  "That sounds strange."

  "If I were human, it would be," she grinned. "I'm going to break you of this habit of associating us with humans, Tarrin." She brought her tail out from under her, a soggy mess that looked like a drowned furry snake, and waggled it for his benefit. "As you can see, I am not human."

  "I've noticed that from time to time," he told her dryly.

  "I got spoiled with these baths when I was at Kerri's palace," she sighed, sinking back down into the water. "The Sha'Kar do it with magic, and the Wikuni do it with technology. Somewhere between the two of them, you can build me a bath where I get hot running water."

  "I'll look into it," he promised her. "It does make you look like a drowned rat, though."

  "It takes forever for my fur to dry, but it's worth it," she laughed. "Care to join me? You could do with some cleaning up."

  "Only if I'm going to take a bath," he teased.

  "Spoilsport," she grinned. "What about you, Sapphire? Do you swim?"

  "Get in the water? Me? No thank you," she said with a shudder of her wings. "I don't like water."

  Tarrin did decide that he could do with some cleaning, so he undressed and slipped into the bathing pool, which was larger than many ponds he'd seen in his lifetime. Just like the bathing pool at the Tower, it was hotter at one side, and a little deeper on the hot end. Tarrin couldn't be hurt by fire, but he could feel heat, and heat still felt nice on the muscles. So he joined Kimmie in a rather hot part of the pool, probably as hot as Kimmie could stand, and draped his arms on the lip of the pool and put his chin on them as Kimmie washed his back.

  "Why do you do that, anyway?" Sapphire asked. "Get into the water."

  "It's how we keep clean," Kimmie replied, splashing water on his back, then picking up a bar of soap from a tray on the pool's edge. She lathered up her paws and started scrubbing his back vigorously. Sapphire walked over to where Tarrin was laying against the side and sat down, looking down at him. He opened his eyes and looked up at her calmly, marvelling once again at how amazing the little drake was. Intelligence granted to her by the birth of the sixth sui'kun, and it had grown to the point where she could speak, where she was as intelligent as most humans. She reached out with one of her prehensile paws, paws that had an opposable thumb, and urged him to show her the palm of his paw. He did so for her, stretching out the fingers and extending his claws to let her look at it, to satisfy whatever curiosity she had.

  "What is it, little one?" he asked in contentment, caught up in Kimmie's attentions.

  "I have seen you crush things in this paw, and yet you touch me with such gentleness," she told him. "I know that you and Kimmie are far stronger than any but the ones that smell similar to me. How do you manage such gentle touches when you're so incredibly strong?"

  "We have very sensitive pads," he replied, lifting a finger and presenting the black pad on his fingertip. "I've learned how to know how much pressure I'm exerting by how it feels on my pads. If I didn't have them, I probably would be crushing things by accident. I wouldn't know how much force I was putting into my grip."

  "It's something we practice, Sapphire," Kimmie told her. "We know how dangerous we can be to humans, so we teach ourselves how to be able to work with them without hurting them. I don't think they understand how hard we work to make sure they never notice how strong we are. It's something we always have to be careful of. One moment's distraction, and we might accidentally crush every bone in a man's hand if we're shaking it."

  "Some of the others you call friend are afraid of you. Especially the big human."

  "It's something I may not like, but I understand it," he told her. "I don't hold it against them. You've never seen me lose my temper before, little one. I can be very nasty. They have seen it, so they're always cautious around me when they think I'm in a bad mood."

  "You would hurt them?"

  "Not on purpose, but it has happened," he admitted.

  "And still they trust
you?"

  "Friends trust friends, Sapphire," Kimmie told her calmly, plainly, washing Tarrin's back off. "They know he wouldn't hurt them intentionally, so when it does happen, they forgive him and move on as if it never happened."

  "I trust you," the drake told him seriously, putting both her paws on his palm pad and staring down into his eyes.

  "I'm glad to hear that, little one," he smiled gently up at her.

  "Do you love me, Tarrin?" she asked directly.

  "Of course I do," he told her. "Ever since that first day, when you landed on my shoulder and nuzzled me. You had me from that moment on." He closed his paw over her little forepaws gently. "I'll admit it's a bit different now that you can talk, but I didn't stop loving you just because you changed. If I had, then I guess I really never loved you at all, did I?"

  "That is profound," the drake told him soberly.

  "It's truth. Truth is always simple, but it can seem profound."

  "I think the wrong friend was teaching me philosophy," Sapphire said with a chirping sound. A laugh!

  "You've got to stay on your toes around Tarrin, Sapphire," Kimmie giggled. "He may not look it, but he's been very thoroughly educated by people with about five different cultural viewpoints, and he's got quite a bit of common sense. That's always dangerous when you get into philosophical discussions."

  "The most dangerous one is always the one you think can't be a danger," she said calmly, a fallback to her instincts. "Are you clean now?"

  "I think Kimmie's dawdling on purpose," Tarrin told her with a smile.

  "Then she needs to finish. I want to learn Sha'Kar. Will you teach me now?"

  "Alright, but we're not staying up all night this time."

  They didn't stay up until dawn, but they did stay up until about three hours before dawn. It turned out to be another marathon session, as Tarrin cast the spell of learning on the drake, and Tarrin and Kimmie took turns teaching her the language. Since they started well before sunset, it gave Sapphire almost twelve hours of continuous teaching, the equivelent of four of his normal sessions. After four sessions, Kimmie could speak broken Sha'Kar and could understand nearly three quarters of what she was hearing in the forms of speech he'd taught her. After that one session, Sapphire had exceeded Kimmie, showing that she was quite gifted at learning languages. She was almost fluent in the two most commonly used forms of Sha'Kar speech, formal and semi-formal, and Tarrin estimated that if he taught her for about fifteen more hours, she would be fluent in the other forms, informal, personal, and high formal. Kimmie had become fluent after about ten sessions. Sapphire looked to be on pace to do it in eight equivelent sessions. Tarrin wondered if teaching her in marathon sessions was what was making her more reticent than Kimmie had been. Would constant, long-term exposure and repeated castings of the memory spell provide faster, more deep-seated effects? The problem with the memory spell was that it was implanted memory, not learned the hard way. Those implanted memories would fade if they weren't used consistently. If Kimmie didn't speak Sha'Kar every now and then, the memory of the language would slowly fade from her mind, until she'd forget it. It's why the katzh-dashi didn't depend on using the spell, because of that drawback. It was always best to learn things by study and not by magic, but if what was taught by the spell was something that the recipient would use in daily life, like a language, then using the memory spell was an efficient and effective way of cutting about six months of tedious language study down to about a ride of regular learning sessions.

  Two things struck Tarrin when he woke up the next morning. One, that nobody had been knocking on his door. Not friends, not sisters, not servants, and not even the Sha'Kar family themselves. And two, that Sapphire could be pushy when she wanted something. He had to beg her off from starting right back up with the education as soon as they were up, because he wanted to know why Allia, Keritanima, Dolanna, or anyone else hadn't bothered to come see him the day before. The entire day had gone by without him seeing any of them. Sapphire's lessons had occupied his mind and made him lose track of that fact. Sapphire was quite adamant about getting the rest of the learning done, so Tarrin compromised by casting the memory spell on her and leaving Kimmie to do the teaching, bringing them a large breakfast from the kitchen so they wouldn't have to interrupt their lesson.

  After he did that, he set out in search of his friends. Their scents were all over the house, so it was a simple matter of tracking whichever scent was freshest that left the kitchen. That happened to be Azakar's, so he tracked it to a chamber on the third floor, with a large, brass-bound door. Tarrin knocked on it and waited, then knocked again. When there was still no answer, he opened the door and looked inside.

  It was a huge room, but was about half the size of the one Tarrin was using. It had a bed about the same size as the one in his room, on a raised dais at the back of the room, and with quite a few delicate-looking pieces of furniture. It looked to be a woman's room. Azakar was laying in the bed, sleeping from the look of him. Tarrin decided not to bother him, closing the door and going off after the next closest scent, which was Dar's. Tarrin tracked him to his room and knocked. And when he got no reply, he opened that door and found himself looking into a room that was remarkably similar to Azakar's room. Tarrin realized that both were guest bedrooms, and as such weren't quite so liberally decorated as Arlan's room. Dar was also in his room, and he was also laying quietly in his bed. But in Dar's case, he wasn't alone. One of the servant girls was in the bed with him, sleeping with her arm draped over his chest.

  Tarrin had to grin. So, Dar took Miranda's suggestion to heart. It was good for him anyway, he needed a little physical pleasure in his life.

  Tarrin closed the door, and tracked down Dolanna's scent. He followed it to her room, on the first floor,and opened the door after she too didn't answer his knock. She had a bedroom somewhat larger than Zak's or Dar's, with ivy growing on one wall and a large statue of a nude Sha'Kar male standing before the living decor. Dolanna too was in her bed, sleeping. And to Tarrin's shock, she too wasn't alone. He had never seen the human in bed with Dolanna, sleeping peacefully, but he was a rather handsome fellow with dark hair and tanned skin.

  That was three sleeping friends, two of which had company. In Dar's case, it didn't seem a big deal, but he was surprised to see Dolanna doing the same thing. Dolanna wasn't celibate or made of stone, but she didn't seem the type that would engage in a casual affair. She was too...human.

  A bit curious, Tarrin scented and tracked down all his friends. Except for Allia, he found them all in their bedrooms, sleeping, and all the humans were not sleeping alone. Even Phandebrass had a pretty maid in bed with him. Allia wasn't in her room, probably out with Allyn somewhere. Keritanima and Miranda were also asleep, but Binter and Sisska were awake, playing chess near the door so they could move to defend it at a moment's notice.

  "Hey," Tarrin called from the open door. "How long have they been asleep?" he asked, looking past them at the large bed on the dais, like all the other rooms, where Keritanima and Miranda were sharing the bed, sound asleep.

  "A long time," Binter replied. "Her Majesty has been more or less sleeping since the night of the feast. She has awakened only long enough to eat and relieve herself."

  "She's been sleeping for two days?" Tarrin asked with a gasp.

  "She has. It was not alcohol they drank, Tarrin," Sisska told him. "We managed to find one of the bottles of drink they consumed. It was some kind of drug."

  "A drug? They drugged us?" he asked in a dangerous tone.

  "It was a drug they themselves drank, Tarrin," Binter told him calmly. "Perhaps they have a resistance to it, and that lack of resistance is why her Majesty has not recovered yet."

  "They are alright, aren't they?" Tarrin asked. "Her and Miranda?"

  "Her Majesty is just sleeping, Tarrin," Sisska assured him. "If you wanted, you could wake her up. But she would be in a very surly mood if you did."

  "Probably," Tarrin grunted. "I can't believe that t
hey drugged us."

  "I doubt it was intentional," Binter said. "These Sha'Kar, they seem to automatically assume that we are exactly as they are. Perhaps they never conceived that the rest of us would be so strongly affected by their drugged wine."

  "It doesn't affect us, or you, I see," Sisska noted.

  "We'd burn it out of our systems before we'd feel it," Tarrin shrugged. "Every one of our friends are sleeping, Sisska, except you two, me, Allia, and Kimmie. And all the humans took a mate. Even Dolanna," he said in disbelief. "Do you think the drug might have induced some kind of mate-frenzy in the humans?"

  "There is no saying, but it wouldn't be impossible," the female Vendari answered. "If even Dolanna and Phandebrass took lovers, then I would say that it would be more than possible."

  "Have either of you seen Allia?"

  "She visited last night," Binter answered. "She did not stay long after she saw that her Majesty was still sleeping. She was going to a party with the male Sha'Kar. Allyn."

  "Allia went to a party?" Tarrin asked in disbelief. "What in the world is going on around here, Binter? Dolanna taking a mate, everyone getting drugged, and Allia goes to a party?"

  "We were wondering the same thing ourselves, Tarrin," Sisska told him with a level look, those black eyes of hers boring into his own.

  "Well, I'm going to go get some answers," he said bluntly. "I'll be back in a little while."

  Tarrin left them, marched through the house with a grim look on his face, then reached Dolanna's bedroom door. He did not knock. But there was plenty of sound to alert those within to his arrival, as what was left of the door clattered to the tiled floor in a loud crash. Dolanna sat bolt upright instantaneously, staring across the room in total surprise, as the male beside her tried to roll over and see what was causing all the racket. Tarrin saw that both of them were nude, and the smell of their mating was still strong enough in the room to make it plain to him that Dolanna had indeed slept with the human. Tarrin stalked into the room as Dolanna stared at him in both annoyance and worry, letting the blanket she'd been holding to her throat drop as he padded up to the steps leading to the bed. "You," Tarrin said, pointing at the handsome male. "Out. Now."