The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  If anything, that got him. He dropped his eyes and blew out his breath, finally understanding why they were all so upset. He guessed that maybe it was a little rash. He was bored, and he didn't think things all the way through. "Alright, I'm sorry," he said contritely. "I shouldn't have done it."

  "You're right. You shouldn't have," she said calmly, staring into his eyes. She pushed his paws off of her arms and rubbed her arm gingerly. "Now you have to make it up to me."

  "I think I can do some of that right now," he said, turning and picking up the chest he'd taken from the ship, which had been sitting on the other chest at the foot of their bed. "I found these over on the ship. When I saw them, I figured you may be able to use them."

  Kimmie gave him a suspicious look as she took the chest, then set it down on the deck and knelt in front of it. She opened it, and her eyes widened when she saw the leather-bound tomes within. She picked one up and opened it, and saw that it was written in a strange, glyphic language that Wizards seemed able to read. "This is a spellbook!" she gasped, looking at it. "I, I don't know this spell!"

  "They're all spellbooks," he told her. "I thought you might want them."

  "Might want--Tarrin, you've given me a treasure!" she told him happily, gazing up into his eyes. "These look like the spellbooks of an accomplished Wizard!"

  She put the book down reverently and carefully, then vaulted up into his arms and kissed him exuberantly on the lips. "Well, you're doing a good job of making up," she grinned as she pulled away enough to look at him. "But I'm not ready to forgive you quite yet."

  Tarrin ran a paw down her back meaningfully. "Maybe I can find some other way to make it up to you," he purred.

  "Now you're getting the idea," she giggled breathlessly, then kissed him again, this time quite seriously.

  Kimmie was absolutely overjoyed that he brought her the spellbooks. Even Phandebrass was impressed by them, as she showed them to her mentor, for the books contained several spells that even he didn't have. And Phandebrass collected magical spells the way a forest floor collected dead leaves in the autumn. She spent the next three days with Phandebrass as they deciphered the spells and learned how they worked, and she allowed her mentor to copy the spells into his own books. But she kept the spellbooks, copying some of the spells she knew into those books and using them as her primary spellbooks instead of her old ones. Tarrin asked after that one night as he watched her carefully writing in one of the new books, doing so on a very small table and chair Tarrin conjured for her, that took up almost the entirety of the available space in the cabin.

  "It's easier to copy a few spells in here than it would be to copy a few dozen into my old books," she told him patiently. "I will copy the spells so I'll have more than one set of spellbooks, but for now, this will do."

  "Why keep more than one set?"

  "These books represent everything I know as a Wizard, Tarrin," she said patiently. "If they get lost or stolen, I'll lose everything. Any mage with even half a clue keeps a copy of his spellbooks in a safe place. Just in case the unthinkable happens."

  "Oh. That makes sense."

  "I'm so glad you agree," she drawled, then returned to her careful work.

  They saw no other ships over those three days, but the formation was closer and the lookouts were being very alert. It was well known now on all five ships that Zakkites had attacked the ship they'd paused to inspect, and they weren't going to let their ancient rivals on the sea get the drop on them. On the fourth day, they did see a plume of smoke appear on the eastern horizon, but no one on any of the ships thought even for a second about changing course to investigate. That far out to see, the smoke could only be coming from a ship.

  The day after that, they encountered their first live ship. It was an old, battered caravel, with a few patches in its sails, merrily making its way due west, and was looking to come close to crossing their path as it approached them. Keritanima went up to the steering deck as the formation around the steamship tightened noticably, as the four clippers moved into a very defensive posture around the unarmed ship that was carrying their queen. Tarrin and Dar happened to be on deck playing stones when the call of the sighting came out, and the clippers tightened up around the steamship. They put the game on hold and went to the rail to get a look for themselves, and saw the old ship with its patched sails and a few patches in its hull. The old ship had seen some action recently.

  Tarrin and Dar watched as the ship slowed as it threatened to cross the path of the clippers, then ran up a white flag. That meant that they were either surrendering or they were attempting a parlay. Tarrin looked up at the steering deck, curious about this turn of events. What would Keritanima do? Would she attack the ship, which was probably a rival seeking the Firestaff? Would she stop to talk to them? Or would she simply pass them by?

  It didn't take him long to find out. He wasn't quite sure how they knew the order, but the four ships surrounding them opened their formation a little, enough for the steamship to put on a little more speed, and they sailed right by the halted vessel, the sailors upon it gawking at the steamship in shock and awe. They'd never seen such a thing before. Keritanima had obviously decided to pass the other ship by without talking to them. All things being as they were, Tarrin felt that Keritanima made the wise choice. That fellow was sailing west, not southwest. He was going in the wrong direction.

  Later that day, it suddenly seemed like it wasn't a very good idea. Allia came to Tarrin right before dinner and told him that the ship they'd passed earlier in the day was following them. Tarrin knew about Allia's incredible eyesight, so he didn't doubt her in the slightest, but that seemed a bit odd. With all that firepower, what in the blazes could that caravel's captain be thinking? Didn't he realize that if he irrititated Keritanima, she'd send one of her clippers to sink him? But how could he know that? As far as the captain of that ship was concerned, he saw a quartet of Wikuni military vessels escorting some kind of bizarre new ship. Maybe he was curious, and was following along a while to see where they were going, or get a better look at the steamship. Or maybe he was taking orders from a mage, who thought that the Wikuni knew where they were going. If that was the case, then Tarrin would be the first to sink them. He didn't want any company tagging along when they reached their destination.

  All his speculation turned out to be moot, however. By morning, the caravel was so far behind that it didn't matter anymore. The steamship hadn't stopped during the night, continuing its steady course just south of southwest, and in the darkness the caravel wouldn't even be able to see the smoke plumes from the smokestacks to guide it as it tried to follow the faster vessels. Keritanima's boasting about the speed of the steamship turned out to be a critical asset to them now, since they could easily outrun any ship that tried to follow them.

  The sighting of the attacked galleon and the encounter with the caravel galvanized the Wikuni and the Tellurians even more. They realized now that they were sailing on a crowded ocean, and they had to be ready for anything. The lookouts were doubled, and they scanned the seas and the skies both at all times during day and night. The ship no longer stopped for periodic inspections of the steam engine, running at all times to keep the ship moving, keep the ship from becoming a target. Tarrin saw that the cannons on the accompanying ships were being cleaned and inspected and the materials they used to fire were brought up from below decks, ready to be loaded and fired at a moment's notice. At night, the gunpowder was taken back below decks, why Tarrin wasn't sure, but he was sure it hadn't been taken very far.

  Things got a little quiet and a bit tense on the ship after the two encounters. The sailors weren't quite as talkative as they were before, and the engineers working on the steam engine were all business, spending almost all their waking hours tending the invention carefully, even as it operated. The tension, added to the heat and the intermittent rain, made many of the sailors short-tempered, and there were a few fights on board the ship that caused a momentary distraction for everyone
else. They kept it running continuously for two days, and the five ships hurried towards the southwest, towards their ultimate goal. At sunset on the second day, however, everyone knew that something was wrong when a sudden grinding sound rattled the ship, so loud and strong that the deck beneath their feet vibrated with the sound. The ship began to slow very quickly, so quickly that the ship trailing behind had to execute a sharp turn and drop its sea anchor to avoid ramming the stern of the steamship as it drifted to a relative halt on the choppy seas. As if the halt wasn't bad enough, the cloudy skies opened up on the ship almost as soon as it drifted to a halt, sending pounding rain down onto the deck and irritating people who were already nervous and flustered.

  Tarrin decided that the best thing to do in a situation like that was sleep it away. He and Kimmie retired to their cabin and went to bed early.

  It was approaching morning, a few hours before sunrise. Tarrin had awakened to relieve himself, and didn't feel like going back to sleep quite yet. He instead laid in bed beside Kimmie and watched her sleep, pondering doing something he promised her he wouldn't do. Though she wanted to keep the sex of the child a secret, that missing information had been eating at Tarrin over the last few days, up to where the need to know was reaching a fever pitch. Just like any cat, or Were-cat, once Tarrin's curiosity was piqued, it was almost impossible to deny satisfying it. He would have done it days ago if not for the promise he made to Kimmie not to do exactly what he was considering doing. Promises were not things taken lightly among Were-cats. To break a promise was to lie, and lying to another Were-cat was a cardinal sin. It was so much of a transgression that him lying to Jesmind was what put her on him and made her try to kill him. Oh, there were little white lies, the kinds of lies that a Were-cat wouldn't find offensive, for they were spoken when the speaker honestly believed he was doing the right thing. But this was much different than saying something not quite the truth to avoid a fight, or trying to hedge in a vain attempt to hide information from Triana. This was a promise.

  Sort of. He hadn't explicitly told Kimmie he wouldn't do it. She had simply told him not to do it, and he had agreed with her. If he did do it, he could raise that as a valid argument against Kimmie, but there would be consequences. Kimmie had proved that she could get to him, get to him in ways that Jesmind could not. That silent treatment was a torture, worse than anything Jesmind had ever done to him, and he didn't want to face the next few rides with nothing but Kimmie's back for company.

  That was the punishment he would face if he did it. He'd satisfy his curiosity, but he'd infuriate his mate in the process. But his curiosity was so strong that he seriously weighed those two things against one another, trying to decide which one was the lesser of the two evils. To leave his curiosity unsatisfied or get the silent treatment from Kimmie. He was going to have to suffer through one of them.

  The Cat finally barged into his debate, quite effectively settling the argument. It saw a good thing here, a receptive female that kept it quite happy. It saw no reason to jeopardize a good mating, so it buried his curiosity beneath an instinctual impulse to protect his unborn child. He shouldn't do anything to upset or aggravate Kimmie until after she gave birth to the cub.

  And that ended that. Blowing out his breath, he put his paw on Kimmie's bare belly, wondering at what was going on in there. He was sure that Triana could give him a day by day accounting of what went on inside a female after she conceived, but she wasn't there, and he wasn't going to peek. It was well within his power to find out, but the consequences for doing so were a bit more than he was willing to endure, for those consequences also affected their baby.

  His paw made Kimmie stir, mumbling something in her sleep, rolling over on her side. Tarrin admired her silhouette, her feminine curves, and marvelled at how different she was from Jesmind. Jesmind had all those same curves, but everything in between them was hard, chiselled muscle. Kimmie was a female with softness in her, a deceptive softness given that she was a Were-cat and was stronger than three human men, but it was the same she-softness of the human women, something that Tarrin, having been turned, found quite appealing. Her differences from Jesmind were more than physical, though. Jesmind was fiery, tempermental, bullish, stubborn, and overbearing, where Kimmie was much more mellow, wiling to give and take with Tarrin without fighting with him over the smallest detail, as Jesmind did. Jesmind made him fight for absolutely everything, always testing the boundaries of their relationship, always pushing him. Kimmie just let things be and found happiness in whatever happened to be in front of her at the moment, but Tarrin had already discovered that when he riled Kimmie, she could be a steel-willed, as adamant as Jesmind was. The difference was that Jesmind was like that all the time, where Kimmie only did it when she found reason to oppose Tarrin's decisions, which she only did when she thought he was wrong. Jesmind would challenge him, even when she knew he was right. Two very different females with almost diametrically opposed personalities, and he had feelings for them both.

  It was more than just friendship now. Tarrin could admit that. Tarrin still loved Jesmind, loved her with all his heart, but he'd begun to feel the stirrings of something maybe a little bit more than friendship for Kimmie. He loved her as friend, and she was a very good friend, but knowing that she loved him was starting to affect how he thought of her. He honored her feelings by trying to be what she wanted him to be, and it made her deleriously happy. And he was happy to make her happy. He was starting to go out of his way to please her, was starting to think of her in many of the ways that he thought about Jesmind. He knew that the baby had alot to do with that, that he was beginning to lavish attention on her to keep her from leaving him when they got back. And he knew deep in his heart that if he had to choose between Kimmie and Jesmind, he would choose Jesmind. That made him feel a little guilty, because Kimmie would be getting the short end of the deal. But on the other hand, she herself had told him that she entered the relationship fully understanding where his loyalties lay. She had been willing to give him up when they returned, and that made him realize how strong she was. Jesmind wouldn't step aside, not for anyone. Jesmind would probably come after Kimmie if she thought that Tarrin's loyalties were changing, getting Tarrin back by simply killing off the competition. Kimmie showed tremendous strength by admitting her love for him, then turning around and telling him that she was willing to let him go. He found a powerful new respect for his new mate after understanding that.

  If anything, Tarrin decided, reaching down and sliding his paw along her bare hip and admiring her, he was glad Triana sent her with him. That wise old Were-cat matron, it bothered him how she was always right. Once, just once, he wanted Triana to be wrong about something, and he wanted to be there to see it. For as long as he'd known her, he had never known her to be wrong about anything yet. Maybe living for a thousand years made her alot wiser and more observant than most other people, but she couldn't possibly be right all the time, no matter how well she thought she knew him. Tarrin made that promise to himself as he slid his paw along Kimmie's waist and along her ribs, feeling her smooth, silky skin. He was going to see Triana wrong about something, even if he had to lie about it. He just wanted to see the look on her face. He'd have hell to pay for it, but that was a consequence he was willing to endure.

  "Tarrin," Kimmie said sleepily, pausing to yawn, "either let me go back to sleep or put your paw back on my butt and give me a reason to wake up."

  "Sorry. I was just admiring how beautiful you are, Kimmie," he told her, setting his paw firmly on her waist and laying back down.

  "It's not that I don't like hearing you say I'm beautiful, but you can admire me in the morning," she said with another yawn. "Unless, of course, you had something else on your mind?"

  "Not really," he answered truthfully.

  "Alright then. We can do that in the morning too. Good night," she said firmly, then she scooted her back up against him and put her head back down on the pillow, pausing to grab his paw and pull on it, making him
drape his arm protectively over her before sighing and immediately returning to sleep. Were-cats could do that, just go right to sleep so long as their minds weren't occupied with something. Tarrin put his nose in Kimmie's hair and let her scent wash over him, then closed his eyes.

  Then opened them again. He rose up over Kimmie as he felt something....tug at him. There wasn't a good explanation for what he was feeling. It was coming from the Weave. He closed his eyes and concentrated on that sensation, trying to understand what it was. It was a tugging, alright, but it wasn't tugging at him, it was tugging at the strands. It was faint, but it was definitely moving in his direction, whatever it was that was causing the tugging. He was sure that there was something causing it, because he knew of no natural force within the Weave that would cause a sensation like that. Or at least nothing he had ever experienced. Besides, this didn't feel natural, didn't feel like it was a natural phenomenon. No, this was something external exerting force against the Weave...and it felt oddly familiar.

  For long moments, Tarrin kept his eyes closed and kept his attention focused on the Weave, as the sensation moved closer and closer. As it approached, he got a clearer sense of it, and managed to discern that it was indeed an outside force exerting itself against the Weave. The tugging sensation was being caused by a strong outflow of magical energy, strong enough to cause an eddy current in the Weave itself that interfered with the magical flow through the strands. That was where the tugging feeling was coming from, from the magical current. Whatever it was, it was strong, and it was moving towards him steadily.