The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  He smiled as Dar touched the Weave, and wove an Illusion of a Troll for some reason. Dar was a very young man, an Arkisian, with swarthy, dark skin and features that promised that he would be a handsome man when he was fully grown. He wore this day a simple white linen shirt, his brown doublet laying on the deck before him, and a pair of black trousers, with leather shoes. He was about sixteen now, just starting to shave, but despite his young years he was a very accomplished Sorcerer. He had been Tarrin's roommate when he was at the Tower to learn,and had become a good friend. Dar was a dreamer and an artist, with an almost amazing affinity for weaving Illusions. But he was also a smart, worldly young man who was the son of very successful merchants, and because of that, had a very broad education that dipped into many different aspects of history, society, culture, and politics. He was intimidated by the august personas around him, and rarely spoke, but when he was alone with Tarrin or Kerri or Allia, he was much more open and affable. Tarrin liked Dar very much, for he was an honest young man with a very mellow nature.

  There was a sudden shout, and Tarrin looked almost straight down, to where Azakar and Camara Tal were sparring. The Amazon had returned to wearing her halter and tripa skirt, and the ensemble showed much more skin than they concealed. Camara Tal was a very tall woman, with copper-colored skin and hair as black as pitch, tall and buxom and sleekly muscular. She was a very handsome woman, with a sharp-cheeked face, large, dark eyes under elegantly sloped eyebrows, and a sharp chin and narrow nose and a pair of pouting lips that drove men crazy. She also had a scar on her cheek, the only mar on her coppery skin, a scar that she had told him once was something that her goddess wouldn't allow her to remove. A reminder of some past event or transgression, though Camara Tal had never told him the specifics. She was a Priestess of the goddess of the Amazons, but had been a warrior before the calling of the religious order. She prided herself on her ability to fight, and was checking to see how improved Azakar had become under his tutelage with the Vendari. Camara Tal reminded him alot of his own mother, Elke, a gruff, direct, no-nonsense kind of woman who didn't play around, yet held great capacity for love and friendship within her. Once one got past her rather unfriendly front, they found a warm, caring woman beneath, and a stalwart friend. Tarrin had been learning the spells of the Priests from her during the mornings, chants in some arcane language that nobody spoke anymore, a language that was used universally among all Priests, no matter what god they served. They used the same spells as well, the Goddess had told him, part of a rule that the Elder Gods had made concerning the gods granting their power to mortals. Tarrin found them difficult to learn, for the language they used made very little sense to him. It was more a memorization of obscure words and sounds than any kind of language he had heard. Tarrin had a strong affinity for languages, being able to speak six languages fluently, so it bothered him a great deal that he couldn't decipher this odd languages that all Priests used to chant their spells, yet none of them seemed able to speak outside of spellcasting.

  She was really pressing Azakar. Azakar was an oddity, a human that was so unbelievably tall that he was even taller than Tarrin. He had to be ten spans tall--a Wikuni would call him eight feet tall...strange term, that--an absolute monster of a human that was as strong as three men yet moved with the speed and agility of a panther. Even decked out in his plate armor, so heavy that an average man couldn't even lift it, let alone wear it, he still moved with speed and precision, though there was a great deal of clanking and squeaking involved when he did move. Azakar had been caught up with Keritanima when she had been separated from the others, and had taken lessons in fighting from the Vendari bodyguards that usually protected the queen, but could not come to Suld with her this time. Tarrin had seen him fight during the short war in Suld, and he had to admit that he had come a very long way. Binter and Sisska had taught him new techniques, but they had also taught him what was most important for a warrior, patience. Azakar, or Zak to his friends, had learned how to not lose his head in a fight, to be controlled and calm and force the opponent to make mistakes that would allow him to defeat him. He watched as Camara Tal and Azakar daned around each other for long moments, then the Amazon lowered her sword meaningfully, a signal to stop. The human sheathed his weapon and took off his large visored helmet, baring a rather handsome face with a strong jaw and a slightly wide nose and full lips. Azakar was a Mahuut, a race of humans from the southern continent of Valkar, with dark brown skin and coal black hair that had curly waves in it, and slightly smallish dark eyes, eyes that seemed hooded and defensive most of the time. Azakar kept his hair very short on top and on the sides, but had rolling black waves of hair cascading down onto his shoulders in the back. Azakar had been a slave at one time, and though he couldn't see them, Tarrin knew that his back and the backs of his arms were covered in a multitude of criss-crossing scars, scars gained at the business end of a whip. Those scars defined much of Azakar's personality, for he was a haunted, defensive man, nervous around strangers and very quiet. He never tried to bring attention to himself, which was very hard considering his great size. But he opened up when around friends, showing that he was a considerate, friendly man who had come through his slavery surprisingly well, not allowing it to change him too much on the inside, though it had hardened him on the outside. If he'd been a Were-cat, Tarrin would have considered him to be feral. He certainly had the traits.

  A strange group, very diverse, but that diversity had proved to be an advantage so far. What one could not do, another could. They had Dolanna and Phandebrass' education, Keritanima and Miranda's intelligence and cunning, Camara Tal's, Allia's, and Azakar's martial skill and bravery, Keritanima's resources and contacts, and Tarrin had many unique attributes that made him useful. Firstly, he was a Were-cat, and his nature granted him several magical and quasi-magical abilities that made him exceptionally hard to kill. Were-kin could only be truly harmed by silver, magic, and weapons of nature, such as fire or acid or being struck by unworked, natural objects, or falling from a height. Wounds inflicted by a non-magical sword healed over as soon as the weapon was withdrawn, which only managed to anger the Were-cat struck by it. His Were nature gave him inhuman strength, a strength proportionate to a cat of the same size. Cats were deceptively powerful creatures, and it gave him the strength of six men, a raw power few humans could challenge. He also had the senses of a cat, and had the power to shapeshift into cat form. The gifts of his Were nature were primarily defensive, keeping him alive and allowing him to detect foes, but his magical powers were most definitely an offensive weapon. Tarrin was a Sorcerer, a very rare kind of Sorcerer called a sui'kun. He was a Weavespinner, a Sorcerer that could weave spells that normal Sorcerers could not even dream to be able to do alone. Tarrin's power was staggering, eclipsing every magician of any order around him, a huge power that few could withstand when he used it in anger. If that weren't bad enough, his Were nature had stopped his aging, rendering him all but immortal. That distinction was important, because it allowed him to transcend a law set forth by the Elder Gods that no mortal would be able to use more than one form of magic. Tarrin was a Sorcerer, but he was also a Druid, a being with mystical ties to the energy generated by living things, an energy called the All. He could use that energy to create Druidic magic, which was very versatile and clever, capable of some things Sorcery either could not accomplish, or he had yet to figure out a spell to accomplish it. He had learned very recently that he could also use Priest magic, which was the reason he'd been taking lessons in Priest spells from Camara Tal, but it was still new and rather uncomfortable. The Goddess had already told him that she would grant no Priest spell to him that had a corresponding spell in Sorcery. Since Sorcery was very versatile in its own right, that covered virtually all Priest spells he had learned so far.

  Tarrin was an almost undefeatable, unkillable opponent, and that was the only reason he was still alive. He and his friends were on a very important mission, a quest to find an ancient artifact that was calle
d the Firestaff. It was an object that could turn a mortal into a god, if he held it on a certain day and at a certain time, the brief time in which it activated every five thousand years. Half the world knew of the Firestaff, and almost all of them were either searching for it or had sent agents to retrieve it for them, so Tarrin and his friends had encountered stiff competition, competition that had often turned violent. From the very beginning, one group in particular, called the ki'zadun, had known of Tarrin, and had continually tried to kill him almost from the very day he left his home village of Aldreth, before he knew anything about the Firestaff. They knew he was the destined Mi'Shara, a term for the one who had the best chance of finding and winning the Firestaff, and they knew he was in the hands of their enemies, the katzh-dashi. So they tried to kill him to deprive the order of Sorcerers from gaining his aid in the search. It did not in any way mean that he was the only one who could get it, but the ancient books that spoke of it said that of all beings, he had the best chance of succeeding. Even he could fail, and if he did, it would fall to some other who had a lesser chance than him, but may have better luck.

  It was why they were on the sea. The Firestaff had revealed itself to the world during the battle at Suld, a battle between the ki'zadun and half of the kingdoms and races in the West, a battle to prevent the ki'zadun from finding and destroying the icon of the Goddess of magic, the Goddess who maintained the Weave. It was an attack aimed at destroying Sorcery and killing almost all Sorcerers in one fell swoop by destroying the physical manifestation of the Goddess, which was also her link to the physical world. Without the icon, the Goddess could not give magic to the world, and it would cause the Weave to tear. That would kill any Sorcerer with even a modicum of ability, and would conveniently destroy the one order of magic that posed the greatest threat to their own bid to find the Firestaff. It had been a very involved plan, a very clever plan, and a very thorough plan. And it had come so close to succeeding that it still made the fur on Tarrin's tail ruffle with goosebumps. Had it not been for the warning he had received from Jegojah, once a Doomwalker under the control of the ki'zadun, they would not have known about it, and they would have won at Suld.

  The Firestaff had revealed itself, and now virtually any Wizard, Priest, Sorcerer, and Druid knew in a general sense what direction in which the Firestaff lay in relation to where they had beeen standing that instant that the Firestaff had activated. Tarrin had no doubt that many of them were now on ships, sailing towards the direction of the Firestaff, hoping to get lucky and find it before anyone else. It was a race on the open sea, but Tarrin and his friends had a fundamental advantage in this race, for they had discovered very specific directions to follow that would take them to where it was hidden. The directions also held warnings, warnings that no ship with sails could reach the Firestaff, so they were sailing to Wikuna to take a very experimental ship that was propelled by a paddlewheel that was turned by a contraption called a steam engine. It could move over the ocean without sails, and would suit their needs.

  That advantage made him optomistic about all this. They may find where the Firestaff is, but they wouldn't be able to physically reach it. But Tarrin's group could, meaning that the only hairy part would be getting the Firestaff back out. They'd have to run a gauntlet of enemies to get away with the prize.

  He was hungry. Kimmie looked intent on her magical lessons, and it was about time for Keritanima's lessons as well. Kerri had crossed over during the battle at Suld, had become a Weavespinner herself, and that meant that there had been some pretty significant changes in her magic. Sorcery was much a function of the body as it was a magical power, and the crossing over changed the body. It rendered the Sorcerer invulnerable to any kind of heat or fire. Keritanima could stroll through a volcano and swim in the lava now, and the worst it would do is burn the dress off her body. But that physical change affected her magical powers, and she had temporarily lost them until she adjusted to the changes her body had undergone. Despite not being able to use magic, Tarrin had begun teaching her the basics of Weavespinner magic, fully confident that she'd be able to use it when she did regain her powers.

  In return for the lessons in magic, Keritanima had been teaching him the Wikuni language. Tarrin had used that as an excuse to experiment a bit with Priest magic, using a spell that caused him to remember with perfect clarity everything that was said during the spell's duration. It was how Dolanna learned Sha'Kar in a matter of a couple of rides. Now Tarrin was using it to learn Wikuni at an accellerated rate, and so far, it had been working. In six short days, he had gone from totally ignorant to being able to form sentences in Wikuni and understanding some of the more obscure grammar rules. He'd been working on his vocabulary the last few days, doubling or tripling the number of words he knew every day. At the rate he was going while using the magic to assist him, he'd be competent enough to understand almost everything everyone said when they got to Wikuna. The Priest spell augmented natural ability, and Tarrin's natural affinity for language made the spell that much more effective when he used it.

  It seemed like cheating, though. He had learned Sulasian and Ungardt as a baby, from his parents. One was Sulasian, the other Ungardt. He learned Arakite from Karn Rocksplitter, the village smith in Aldreth, who taught it to him during long hours over the forge when Tarrin had briefly worked there to help Karn after his apprentice broke both his arms in a very bad accident. He learned Selani from Allia while they were at the Tower together, the Selani woman wanting to be able to speak to him in her native tongue, a language in which she could express herself more easily. He learned the dead language of Sha'Kar from scrolls that he, Keritanima, and Allia had stolen from forgotten vaults in the Cathedral of Karas in Suld. And he'd learned Sharadi from a Selani named Denai while crossing the Desert of Swirling Sands. Now he was learning Wikuni, but he was doing it in a matter of days, and that seemed...cheap. Things gained easily weren't valued as much, his mother would say. He was learning Wikuni with almost no effort, and he wondered if the language would hold in his mind long after the magic that helped place it there faded away. Cheating or not, he enjoyed it. Tarrin loved languages, loved to learn them, loved to speak them. It was a special gift, something that had nothing to do with Sorcery or being a Were-cat or anything, something he enjoyed. Where some knitted or collected ancient coins or carved or painted, Tarrin learned languages.

  He felt better. Kimmie's scent had been flushed out of his nose, including the inviting smell of her availability, replaced by the clean smell of the salty ocean and the smell of the wood and rope and paint that surrounded him, as well as a few lingering scents of some those who had recently occupied the crow's nest before him. He felt ready to go back down there and endure it for a while, while he taught Keritanima about Weavespinner ways and she taught him the Wikuni language. He enjoyed the lessons, both teaching and learning, just enjoyed spending time with Keritanima. She had been separated from him when they had left Suld to seek out the Book of Ages, an ancient tome of knowledge that held information vital to their mission, had been taken back to Wikuna to face her father for running away. Tarrin had missed her desperately during the time she was gone, and it got worse when he himself had been separated from the others after getting the Book of Ages, forced to get back to Suld on foot while the rest of them went back by ship. That had been a journey of nearly two thousand leagues, and it had taken him nearly a year. A year with no one but Sarraya for company at first, and then later the companionship of Var and Denai, two Selani he'd met while crossing the Desert of Swirling Sands.

  Var and Denai. He had to chuckle at the thought of them. They'd been coming to Suld with the other Selani to help, but he hadn't seen them there. He'd honestly forgotten about them in all the chaos, but when he did realize that he hadn't seen them, he asked his bond-mother Triana to find out what happened to them. Triana had circulated the word through the Druids, and one of them had finally responded two days ago. She had contacted him the day after and told him that his suspicio
ns were correct. Denai was pregnant, and according to Selani custom, the expecting mother and the father of the child could not fight, to protect the interests of the child. They had gotten but two days from Suld when they were forced by their clan chief to leave the West, to return to the desert before Denai got too big to travel. They had been forced to turn around almost within sight of their destination.

  Fate was sometimes cruel that way.

  But he was happy to hear it. Var and Denai were young, and very much in love. The child would be loved, nurtured, and would grow up happy. That was the best thing that could happen for a child.

  Climbing up onto the edge of the crow's nest, Tarrin vaulted out into open air and snagged a rope. He dropped down onto a mast spar, startling the two Wikuni who were trying to secure it with ropes, then almost immediately stepped off of it and dropped twenty spans to another rope, using it to break his fall. Tarrin had the agility and dexterity of a cat, and had an absolute fearlessness concerning heights. He used the rigging and the masts and spars and jibs to execute a controlled descent to the deck, moving with a speed and grace that made all the sailors stop what they were doing and watch the Were-cat seemingly fall through the rigging and land easily on the deck so far below. He landed right beside the mizzenmast, not far from the sterncastle, and within spans of Keritanima's chair.