Chapter 10
The hope that they were coming out of the void faded quickly after the ship started moving under the power of its sails early the next morning, as they got closer to the strands that Tarrin had sensed. The fact was, they were strands, but they were not strands. They were the strangest strands Tarrin had ever assessed, because they were closed. They were strands, and they did have magical power flowing through them, but the strands seemed to be sealed off somehow, resisting Tarrin's every attempt to look into them or draw their power out of them. He couldn't even sense how strong the magic that flowed within them was, he could only go by the metaphysical dimensions of the strands to get a rough estimate of them. They were fairly large strands, and that meant that they probably could move a good deal of magical energy. He could see them, but he could do nothing else with them or to them. It was almost like they didn't exist as anything but an Illusion.
Quite clearly, they had encountered something that none of them had ever seen before, magic on a level not seen in the world since the Breaking. Tarrin was still separated from the Goddess, so he didn't think she could explain the strands to him. They rose up out of the sea and stretched into the sky, beyond his ability to see the Weave, for that aspect of his augmented vision had a range more limited than his normal sight. Since the strands were closed off in that unusual way, and they were in the general vicinity of the wind, Tarrin reasoned that those closed strands were somehow feeding the magical effect that created the wind, granting them the magic to operate even within this area of magical emptiness.
Beyond the strands was more magical emptiness. But now Tarrin did not hide in his cabin, for the realization that they had passed the first of the poem's listed obstacles made all of them edgy and anxious. All twelve of them were up on deck, Azakar wearing his armor and Camara Tal her breastplate, ready for any possible surprises. Dar and Dolanna and Allia dispensed with their lessons that day, Allia up in the crow's nest so her eagle eyes could spy things on the horizon that nobody else would be capable of seeing. Miranda helped with a spyglass borrowed from Captain Jalis, standing on the roof of the sterncastle that covered the ship's wheel and scanning the seas with the spyglass. Tarrin and Keritanima stood in the bow with Binter and Sisska in quiet, vigilant attendance, standing there as if waiting for something to appear on the horizon any minute now, but not quite sure what it was. Phandebrass and Kimmie were the only ones that seemed relatively unphased by their situation, as Kimmie sat on a chair Tarrin conjured for her, just beside him, with one of the captured spellbooks in her lap, as Phandebrass continued his research on the Zakkite flying device. Sapphire felt well enough to come out of the cabin, sitting on a jib low in the rigging with Chopstick and Turnkey perched up there with her. The sailors working in the rigging worked around the three little drakes, though they didn't really have to go far out of their way, since the three drakes weren't perched in a place that had much traffic.
It was quite a change from what they had endured before. The wind blowing from behind was cool and dry, and it was just strong enough to push the ship at a fair pace without being so strong that it threatened to break the already damaged foremast. It was a big change from the stifling heat on the other side of the storm, almost as if they had somehow sailed directly from the tropics to the northern marches. But the Skybands above told them that they were still relatively close to the equator, for they were still a knife-edge across the sky. Only now they leaned into the northern sky, when Tarrin was so used to seeing them hovering just inside the southern section of the sky. Keritanima explained that long ago by telling him that the Skybands were a heavenly body, like the moons, and they seemed to sit right on the equator. When one was in the northern hemisphere, they looked to be in the southern sky. When one was in the southern hemisphere, they appeared to rest in the northern sky. As they continued to move south, further and further away from the equator, the Skybands would expand in size, creeping ever deeper into the northern sky as their inside edge remained somewhat stationary.
The constant wind blowing into their faces before made it hard to enjoy the change in temperature, but now it was quite pleasant. The sailors and engineers especially seemed to enjoy the cooler air, the engineers sneaking out of the engine room to get a breath of fresh cool air before returning to the hot confines of the hold. The steam engine had ruptured a few pipes in the attempt to breach the wind barrier, but Donovan had told Keritanima that morning that they had plenty of spare pipe stored in a corner of the engine room, and they'd be back under steam by suppertime. Until then, the ship would continue on under sail, and also enjoy much calmer seas than they had endured while sailing up into the wind.
They were all wary and observant that day, but they stood guard against empty sea. None of them felt foolish in the slightest, for they were in uncharted territory, and they'd already managed to get past several insidious magical obstacles. Anything could happen when one was dealing with ancient magic, still functioning after thousands of years, and so delicate and subtle that not even Tarrin could sense it. The Ancients had hidden the Firestaff for a reason, and they'd done a very good job protecting it thus far. The protections were so effective, in fact, that Tarrin didn't quite understand why the Goddess wasn't willing to leave the artifact where it was. Only a steamship could have breached that wind, and only the Wikuni and the Tellurians had the technology to do it.
But maybe that was the point. The Wikuni and the Tellurians did have the capability to breach the first of the known barriers. If a king like Damon Eram was still on the throne in Wikuna, who was to say how close he would come to getting his hands on the Firestaff? The Wikuni's gunpowder was very fearsome, and if they could bring it to bear against the mythical guardian of the Firestaff, they could very well kill it and walk away with the Firestaff with only minimal losses. Keritanima's steamship proved that if someone was clever enough and resourceful enough, they could very well penetrate the carefully designed obstacles the Ancients created and retrieve what was never meant to be retrieved. The Ancients relied on magic, but in this modern age, what was circumventing their magical defenses was technology. Something the Ancients could not have taken into account when they hid the Firestaff those thousands of years ago and designed the magical defenses to protect it from being reclaimed. Without the technology of the steam engine, the Firestaff may very well be unreachable. But they did have it, and they had used it to get where they were now. If they did it, then anyone with the knowledge they possessed would be able to do it as well.
Times had changed. Perhaps that was why the gods were so worried now, worried that the advancement of the peoples of the world made the forbidden object not quite so forbidden anymore.
They stood there for almost the entire day, waiting for Allia to call out at any minute that she had seen something, but it never came. The magical void kept Tarrin from talking to Jesmind or Jasana, which made him a little more edgy, since Jesmind always went nuts when Tarrin didn't talk to her when he said he would. Nobody really got anything done that day except for Kimmie.
The ship dropped anchor and raised it sails at sunset, not wanting to continue moving in dangerous, unknown waters in the dark, and they all shared a rather quiet, anxious meal. Nobody really felt like talking, mainly because they all shared the same feeling of expectant nervousness. None of them knew what was going to happen next, and that made them not quite as talkative as usual.
Almost. Kimmie had remained quiet during dinner, but she became quite animated when they got back to the cabin. She talked away as Tarrin put Sapphire down in her bed and made sure she had enough food and water for the night, then continued to talk away as they undressed for bed. She talked about the spellbooks she'd been studying, telling him all about the many spells in them, spells that she and Phandebrass both had never seen before. The Zakkites were a kingdom of magicians, and their spellbooks reflected their very heavy use of magic in their daily lives. They had spells for almost everything, from dusting the furniture to cleaning the dishes, spells for battle and spells for daily life. They even had a spell for the physical gratification of a lonely wife, though Kimmie used terms much less delicate or modest than that.
"I wonder who would waste time making a spell like that," Tarrin snorted as he shrugged out of his shirt.
"Well, I guess the men are always sailing around on ships looking for boats to sink. That must make their wives rather lonely," Kimmie said with a mischievous grin. "That, or a woman designed it who couldn't find, you know, a good man."
"Magical debauchery. Now I've seen everything."
Kimmie giggled as she pulled her dress over her head, slashing her tail a few times to settle the fur disturbed when the tail was pulled through the hole cut in the back of the dress to accommodate it. She turned sideways to hang her dress up, and Tarrin saw that her belly was just as flat and sleek as it had always been. It had nearly been two months now since she conceived, but there had been no physical signs of it quite yet. She did eat much more than normal now, and did start to have cravings for certain foods, but since Tarrin was a Druid, he could Conjure anything she wanted at any time. "It just goes to show, Tarrin. Humans are funny creatures."
"I know," he agreed, laying on his side on the bed, watching her. "It's even stranger to think that we used to be human."
"Seems like it isn't possible, doesn't it?" she agreed with a smile and a nod, putting a paw on her belly. "I wish this cub would start getting fat. I'm starting to worry that something's wrong."
"Should you be showing yet? I'm not that familiar with Were-cat pregnancy."
"I should just start to get thick around the middle about now," she told him. "But since Triana's worried about it, I guess it makes me nervous too. The cub's in there, I can feel it more now than ever. It just isn't growing fast yet."
"Is it moving yet?"
"I think it is, but the feelings are so slight that sometimes I'm not sure if it's that or just gas," she said with a laugh. She came over and sat down on the bed and started brushing her hair, one of her nightly rituals. Tarrin reached around her and put a paw on her belly, trying to see if he could feel anything moving around in there. When he put a paw on her, he felt that she was starting to develop a little expansion in her belly. It was hard to see because her sides had expanded a proportional amount, hiding it from his eyes. "You are a little thicker, Kimmie," he told her.
"I know, but I'm not sure if it's as much as I'm supposed to be. That's what worries me," she fretted, putting the brush through her hair again. "I hope you'll still like me when I get fat and ugly," she told him.
"You're not going to be fat, Kimmie," he said sternly. "You'll be pregnant. There's a difference."
"I'm going to feel fat, and that will make me feel ugly," she complained. "What would you want with a fat mate?"
"Do I have much of a selection right now?" he asked with a slight smile. Kimmie whipped her head around to glare at him, but when she saw his smile, she laughed ruefully. "I thought you were a sexy Were-cat before, and I still think you're a sexy Were-cat now. Even when you start getting round, I'll still think you're sexy."
"What a sweet thing to say," she purred, leaning down to kiss him before returning to brushing her hair. "Even if I don't believe you."
"Why say that?"
"You say it now, but I'm not fat yet," she told him. "When I'm fat, we'll see how sexy you think I am."
"You're such an optimist, Kimmie," Tarrin chuckled, caressing her belly. "Besides, you're fun to have around, even if we're not making love. I'll keep you just for your wonderfully bright outlook on life," he drawled.
Kimmie looked at him, then laughed delightedly. "I never realized we graduated out of a purely physical relationship."
"Who's lying now?" he told her with a pat on her belly. "You know that's not true."
"Well, maybe," she hedged with a charming smile. "I guess I'm just a girl trying to keep her man interested in her."
Her proximity was starting to get to him, and leaning back the way he was, staring at her bare hip and the peek of her bare round bottom, the sleekness of her back, the glance of the swell of her breast when she moved the right way, smelling her closeness, made him want her. "I'd say you're doing a very good job," he told her, leaning forward enough to kiss her on her hip, grabbing her tail and giving it a slight tug, squeezing it gently.
She shivered at that, and Tarrin scented the change in the texture of her scent that never failed to entice him. She sniffed at the air audibly, then turned and looked down at him with hungry eyes. "Why brush my hair when I'm just going to muss it up?" she asked breathlessly, tossing the brush to the floor and climbing into bed with him with a great deal of kissing and giggling.
Kimmie proved to be a delightful distraction to a serious, mentally draining day, and her ardor hadn't diminished when they woke up the next morning. Tarrin felt a little more relaxed and ready to deal with another day of nervous anticipation after Kimmie effectively burned up all his nervous energy. Allia had once said in a naughty tone that a little rolling in the sheets did much for one's temper, and Tarrin had to admit that she was right. He seemed much less high-strung than his friends, joining them on the deck for a breakfast of a bowl of ham stew passed out to them by the ship's cooks. The dining room had been taken over temporarily as a safe place to store the gunpowder, so everyone, even the Captain, was either eating in their cabins or on deck.
"You're in a good mood," Keritanima noted as he took a bowl from Binter with a nod of thanks.
"Kimmie was feeling frisky this morning," Tarrin replied with a slight smile.
"If only I had Rallix here to be similarly entertained," Keritanima grunted in a sour tone.
"You could have brought him along," Tarrin told her.
"Yes, but I didn't want to put him at risk. This is dangerous, brother."
"True," Tarrin agreed.
"I wish we'd get out of this void," Keritanima growled. "I can't even talk to him right now."
"You had him get an amulet?" Tarrin asked.
"Yah, it was a good idea. I'm glad you mentioned it," she answered. "It's a lot easier being apart when we can talk to each other."
"Maybe I should look into those spells your Priests use," Camara Tal said. "It would be nice to be able to talk to my husbands right now."
"Which one?" Dar asked.
"Are you asking me which is my favorite, Dar?" the Amazon asked.
"I think I already know which one that is," the young Arkisian said with a smile.
"Oh? And which would that be?" Camara Tal asked archly.
"Koran Dar," he answered.
"Koran Tal!" she corrected him hotly.
"That's all the proof I need right there," Dar grinned.
"You just like him because his former house name happens to be the same as yours," the Amazon told him.
"No, I like him because I've seen you pawing him when you didn't think anyone was looking," Dar told her with a mischievous grin.
"It's a woman's right to paw her husband," Camara Tal said bluntly. "I paw all my husbands."
"But you certainly seemed to be enjoying it with him," the Arkisian pressed.
"I've made no secret of that fact that I do fancy him, Dar," she admitted. "He is certainly the most handsome of my husbands. But he's the one I want to father my children. Our children would be strong and good additions to our house."
"You choose which husband fathers your children?" Allia asked curiously.
"Of course," she replied. "We are a small nation with few people, so we're very careful to breed only with the best men to maintain the strengths of our bloodline. Koran Tal is the prime man in my harem, so he is the one I've chosen to father my children."
"No wonder you're so hot on him coming home with you," Miranda noted in a serious tone. "If you can't have any children except with him, it makes it hard to produce heirs if he's not there."
"Not can't, exactly," Camara Tal elaborated. "More like won't. Koran is a special man, and the children he will give me will be special. I won't settle for anything less than him. And I'm not getting any younger," she growled. "Women my age back home have four children by now, and here I am, still childless."
"He certainly seems stubborn about going back," Keritanima said. "I've talked with him a few times. He likes you, Camara, he really does, but he just can't see himself going back to Amazar."
"I'm going to change that," she promised with a grim look.
After the meal, Allia returned to the crow's nest as the ship started moving again under the power of the steam engine. She didn't stay up there long, however, as the wind blew the smoke back into the rigging, causing her to drop out of the rigging as quickly as she could, choking and coughing once the smokestacks started belching forth copious amounts of the black smoke. She had to settle for standing on the top of the sterncastle with Miranda, sharing the spyglass with her as she sought to find their destination, as the poem hinted she had to do. On the deck below, all Allia's friends except for Tarrin, Binter, and Sisska paced nervously back and forth or stared worryingly out to sea, as Tarrin and Binter locked horns once again over the chessboard. Tarrin had yet to defeat either of the Vendari in chess, and he was bound and determined to do just that before they got where they were going. Sisska was much better at chess than Binter, but Binter was no slouch. Binter had been trained by his mate, and much of the genius Tarrin faced in Sisska was beginning to blossom in Binter's game play. Tarrin figured to defeat Sisska's apprentice, and then go after the mistress of the chessboard herself.
Unfortunately, reality did not live up to Tarrin's ambitions that day. Binter defeated him convincingly three times, then he was crushed by Sisska later that afternoon. He sought solace with Kimmie and Sapphire that night, setting a chessboard on the bed and studying it as Kimmie read from one of the capture spellbooks. She finally looked up as Tarrin recreated the board as he remembered it and tried to figure out where he went wrong, how Binter had beaten him in the last game they played. "Tarrin, what are you doing?" she asked.
"Trying to figure out how Binter beat me," he replied, rubbing a finger along his chin as he studied the pieces. "I don't see where I'm messing it up."
"If you could, you wouldn't be losing," she said impishly.
Tarrin snorted at her, flicking his ears in mild irritation as he looked at the chess board.
"You know what? I think you're getting into this to keep yourself from thinking about the serious things," she told him with a smile.
"Probably," he agreed. "It's a lot easier to think about this than worry about things we don't know about. All we can do is wait and see. Until then, I guess this is good enough," he said, motioning at the chessboard with a paw.
Sapphire hopped over to the bed and sniffed at the ivory chess pieces on her side of the board. Tarrin smiled down at her, scratching her between the horns. "I should teach you to play, little one," he told her.
"I don't think she'd be a good partner. But you could teach me," Kimmie offered, setting the spellbook in the chair behind her as she stood up. "I need a break from this for a while."
Sapphire watched in strange fascination as Tarrin explained the rules of the game to his mate, showing her how each piece moved, and the rules that governed its movement. "Alright, so this one can only take another piece diagonally, but it can't move in any direction but forward unless it's taking another piece," she reasoned, holding up a pawn. "What happens if you move it all the way to the other side of the board?"
"It becomes a queen," he explained with a raised eyebrow. "That's a pretty strange question."
"I couldn't figure out what would happen if it couldn't move anywhere," she replied. "I guess that's a pretty suitable reward, if you can get a pawn all the way over without losing it."
"That's the general idea," Tarrin told her.
The ship stopped again that night, Jalis unwilling to move in uncharted waters in the dark, but Tarrin and Kimmie hardly noticed. Kimmie proved to be a fast learner, and her education and training as a Wizard gave her a very logical mind. That logical reasoning made her a dangerously talented chess player, and she very nearly beat him after their fifth game. Tarrin admitted that he wasn't paying much attention to the game, his attention diverted by Sapphire and her strange intent expression as she looked at the pieces. She even jumped up onto Tarrin's shoulder so she could get a better look at the board.
Tarrin had lost track of the game at that point, as he studied his pet more carefully. Did she understand what was going on? Had the birth of the new sui'kun affected more than her lightning magic? Had it made her smarter?
After recovering himself and defeating Kimmie for the fifth time, she begged off the rematch to go to the galley and get them all something to drink. Tarrin reset the board and then quite deliberately put Sapphire in front of it. She looked up at him curiously, her forked tongue flicking out to test the air between them. Her reptillian eyes were locked on his cat's eyes, as he tried to fathom the mind of the animal.
"Alright, Sapphire," he said in a low tone, feeling his suspicions rise even higher. "I get a very strange feeling that you know exactly what I'm saying. Don't you?"
She didn't react, but she did blink, her attention remaining eerily fixed on his eyes.
"Maybe not exactly what I'm saying," he amended to himself. "But I do think you're aware of what's going on. More than even I realized."
Her gaze didn't waver. Tarrin suspected that he could prove it, and he went about it by reaching down and moving one of the pawns on the board. It was a poor starting move, something he would not have done against a learned player, but he wasn't intending on playing a game. At least not in seriousness. He motioned over the board with his paw, looking at Sapphire. "I think you know what to do, little one," he urged.
Sapphire stood up, walked to the edge of the board, and then grabbed the king's knight in her teeth. She pulled it over the pawns, then set it down where it would be allowed to move.
Sapphire had known how the knight moves, and knew it could jump over other pieces.
Tarrin moved out his own knight to defend the pawn he had moved earlier, and Sapphire knocked over the king, queen, and both of her bishops to grab the queen's pawn in her teeth and push it out two squares. Again, a legal move. He set the pieces back up and responded by moving his king's pawn, and then she picked up the queen's bishop and knocked over the queen and the pawns in the middle of the board to put the bishop in a position where it was defended by the knight she'd placed earlier. Again, a legal move, and this time she had set the piece in a position that made one sacrifice to take the piece. Her moves didn't have any kind of unifying theme behind them, Tarrin realized, but two things were clear. Sapphire had learned the rules governing the movement of the pieces by watching Tarrin and Kimmie, and she had remembered them well enough to apply them in this little test. He didn't think she had a grasp of the underlying strategy of the game, but it was clear to him that Sapphire had learned something that an animal should not be capable of understanding.
Amazing. Sapphire was smarter!
"Sapphire!" Tarrin said in wonder, reaching over and stroking her head gently. "I'm impressed, little one!" He laughed and reached over the board, picking her up and then holding her at arm's length over his head. "I'm going to see if I can't teach you the Sulasian tongue, by beautiful little drake," he cooed to her. "You may not be able to speak it, but it would be incredible if you could understand it."
She chirped fondly to him as he cuddled her to his chest, stroking her smooth scales gently.
Kimmie returned with a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses. She looked at him cuddling the drake, then raised an eyebrow and gave him a quirky smile. "Should I leave you two alone?" she asked.
"I have to show you this, Kimmie," he said immediately, putting Sapphire back down on her side of the chessboard. "Alright now, Sapphire, try not to knock everything over this time." He reached over and moved his pawn up another square, then motioned to the drake.
Sapphire padded back and forth as she looked at the board, then moved her queen's knight out of the back row in her jaws, setting it delicately down on the board without knocking over the pieces.
"She must have seen me do that," Kimmie said, setting the wine and glasses down on the tiny table that held Sapphire's bed.
"Kimmie, she's made all the moves on her side of the board," Tarrin told his mate immediately, moving out his queen to threaten her queen's knight. Sapphire looked at the board, and then she grabbed the king in her teeth and moved it beside the rook, then moved the rook to the opposite side of the king.
Sapphire had castled!
"She moved two at once," Kimmie said curiously. "Isn't that that that fortress move?"
"Castle," he said, staring intently at his drake. Tarrin moved his queen out and took the queen's knight, and Sapphire, being careful not to knock over the pieces by craning her neck over the board, grabbed his queen and pulled it off the board, then moved one of her pawns into the square it occupied. She understood that well enough!
"Did she just take your queen?" Kimmie asked in wonder.
"She did, and it was a legal move," Tarrin told her with a broad smile. "Kimmie, Sapphire was affected by the birth of the sixth sui'kun a lot more than we thought. She's smarter now. Just look at what she's learned, just by watching us! Can you imagine what else she's learned while she's watched us, or watched the crew or our friends? She sits up in the rigging and does nothing but watch us, ever since the birth."
"I'll be dipped in hogfat," Kimmie said in wonder, then she laughed. "Sapphire, you little sneak!"
The drake actually looked a little contrite. But she seemed calm, as if it had been her intention to show them that she was smarter than they thought.
"I'm going to teach her Sulasian," Tarrin told her. "Want to help?"
"Why not?" Kimmie laughed. "But we really should teach her a much more elegant language, like Torian."
"You're biased."
"So are you," she grinned. "Want to compromise and teach her something else?"
"No, let's stick with what everyone around here commonly speaks."
"Then we should teach her Wikuni."
"Ah, no. Right now, I think Sulasian will be enough for her to handle. Besides, it'll be good practice for us. Teaching her will be like teaching an infant. We need to learn that, for when your baby comes."
"Well, when you say it that way, it sounds like a good idea," she said with a gentle smile. "But you know it's going to take a while, and we'll be very busy soon enough."
"I forgot about that," he said with a brooding frown. "Well, we could cheat, I suppose."
"Use magic on her? Well, that may work, but she's an animal, Tarrin. It may not be healthy. Besides, you'll have to wait until we get out of this magical void."
Tarrin reached over the board and picked up his drake, scratching her between her horns in the way that she so loved, which made her chirp contentedly and lean her head against his chest. "My little Sapphire is a smart little drake," he cooed to her. "Then again, maybe I should talk to her a little more maturely," he chuckled.
"She may be smarter, but it's unformed intelligence," Kimmie reminded him. "You teach an infant with baby talk, and besides, she likes it when you pay attention to her that way."
"She does at that," Tarrin agreed, cuddling the drake to his chest.
"You know, I suddenly feel a bit embarrassed," Kimmie laughed. "She's been in this cabin with us since we left Wikuna. She's overheard all our secrets, and she's probably been watching us when we make love. I feel violated," she winked.
"Like a Were-cat female could ever feel violated," Tarrin scoffed. "As to the secrets, well, I don't think she remembers things she overheard before the birth quite the same way she does now, and even if she does remember, I doubt she'd go off and blab them to the ship. Even if we teach her Sulasian, the shape of her mouth won't let her speak it very well. She'd be very hard to understand."
"Maybe. We'll see," she said, picking up the chessboard and setting it on the floor after putting the pieces in a small canvas pouch. "But if Wikuni sailors start coming up and pulling on my tail, I'll know who to blame."
Kimmie found it very pleasurable when Tarrin pulled gently on her tail. He wasn't quite sure why she did, but then again, Jesmind liked it when he bit her neck. He guessed that every Were-cat was different in their own ways, and that included what they found pleasurable and what they didn't.
"You never know, Kimmie," Tarrin said with a sly smile. "Maybe I did it."
"You'd better not!" Kimmie shouted playfully, jumping into the bed and pinning him down beneath her, forcing Sapphire to scramble out of Tarrin's lap to avoid getting crushed. "I'd have to punish you," she told him with a grin. "And it wouldn't be the good kind of punishment, either."
"I can live with that, as long as I get the good punishment afterwards."
"Flirt," she teased, leaning down and kissing him on the tip of his nose. "Now behave yourself, and we'll drink this bottle of wine, have a nice long chat about all the things we love to talk about, and then get some sleep."
"Hmm… behave, or misbehave. Behave, or misbehave," he said with mock seriousness, rolling his eyes from side to side as if choosing between two things he could see. "Can't I do both?"
"No!" she laughed, slapping him playfully on the shoulder before letting him up.
Tarrin did behave, and they drank the bottle of wine, talked about Sapphire, as well as how anxious everyone was and how tense things seemed with them being so close to their destination, and then about anything else that came to mind, like chess or what was happening in Suld or how Mist and Eron were doing, anything at all. Tarrin enjoyed the talks he had with Kimmie, because she was an engaging, intelligent woman who was patient enough to be able to do it and smart enough to always challenge his mind. They talked well into the night, as Sapphire laid in her bed with her eyes open, watching the two of them attentively, and then they went to bed. But the conversation didn't stop with that, as they continued to talk as Kimmie let Tarrin brush her hair, then brush her fur, and they continued to talk as Kimmie undid Tarrin's braid, brushed out the dust, and then rebraided it for him, and even continued on as they blew out the lantern and settled in for the night. They talked until the warm, inviting bed overwhelmed their desire to talk, causing both of them to drift off in the middle of a discussion about how strange Wikuni society had seemed to them for the short time they'd been there.
The next morning, Tarrin was not quite as occupied as everyone else, because he had something to distract him from the seriousness of their position. He came up on deck with Sapphire and started teaching her Sulasian, showing her objects and telling her the words they represented. She paid careful attention to him throughout the morning, as Allia and Miranda stood on the roof of the sterncastle and continued to search for their unknown destination, seeming to absorb what he was trying to teach. He would teach her the words for various small objects, then test her by laying the objects out on the deck and speaking one of the words and having her identify the object. She began to get the hang of the instruction quickly, and by lunchtime, she had learned about two hundred words. She was learning at a very high rate of speed, so quickly that Tarrin was a little intimidated.
What he was doing invariably attracted a crowd of his friends, and they were amazed that the drake was as smart as she was. Phandebrass especially seemed astounded by it, and he nearly got himself thrown overboard when he asked Tarrin if he could dissect Sapphire's brain to find out how it had changed. Tarrin treated his drake to a very sumptuous lunch for her hard work, and continued with her in the afternoon, this time with help. Azakar and Camara Tal, still dressed in their armor and breastplate, came over after lunch and helped out, actually getting in the way at first as they just threw words at the drake, but after Tarrin calmed them down and organized things, they did help out quite a bit. He did start riding them when Azakar started teaching Sapphire words in Arakite, and Camara Tal started teaching her Amazon. He didn't want to confuse the drake overly at first, and trying to teach her three languages at once would confuse her.
By sunset, Sapphire had quite a vocabulary. She knew the words for almost everything one could see on the deck, and everything one could carry on his person. She had learned the names of all his friends, and had even come to understand the concept of racial groups. She could tell the difference between a Wikuni and a human, an Amazon and an Arakite, a Selani and a Were-cat. He knew that because he would tell her the word for a race, and the drake would fly over and land on the shoulder of a member of that race briefly, then fly back to him. Tarrin was very happy with the progress the drake had made that day, and as the sun set over the western horizon, he treated her again to a large plate of veal, one of her favorite meats.
But all thoughts of the drake vanished when Allia's voice called out over the deck. "I see something!" she cried quickly, patting Miranda's shoulder and pointing her in the direction she was looking. Tarrin looked up at the pair quickly, then looked in the direction that Allia was pointing, almost directly off the starboard side, just a little angled towards the bow. All he could see was empty ocean, even after he rushed up to the rail and put his paws over his eyes to try to screen out the light of the setting sun. Tarrin wondered how she could see looking into the sunlight. He looked up at her again, and saw that she was wearing one of the Selani visors. Where did she get it? She said she'd broken hers! He saw that she had to hold it over her face to keep it from slipping off her nose, and when he took a better look at it, he realized that it was the one he used in the desert. She had taken his visor! No wonder he couldn't find it anywhere!
In five steps and one bounding leap, Tarrin was on the roof of the sterncastle as an excited Allia pointed to what she saw. "Right there, Tarrin!" she said in Selani. "It's right there, but I have no idea what it is!"
"What do you see, sister?"
"Here, you look," she said, taking off the visor and handing it to him. "Miranda, give Tarrin the spyglass," she ordered the mink in Sulasian.
Tarrin donned the visor and held the spyglass up to his eyes. At first he saw nothing but a blur, but Miranda showed him how to focus the image. He scanned the glass back and forth slowly, until he finally saw what Allia had seen. And it made little sense.
It was a tiny spot of blackness on the horizon. There was no form or shape to the darkness, but it was very discernable with the red of the sky backlighting it. It was a tiny spot of black sandwiched between the red sky and the dark blue sea.
And it was tiny looking through the spyglass! Tarrin felt very awed and impressed at his sister's vision, to see something so tiny at such a distance, with the sun in her face! No wonder the poem said they'd need Allia to find what they were looking for… only a Selani, or perhaps an Aeradalla, would ever have spotted that!
"It's not much, sister, but it's definitely something," he told her in Selani. "I can't make anything out. Can you?"
"No, just the darkness," Allia replied. "Almost as if night had taken over that one little patch of sea. If it wasn't sunset, I would never have seen it," she admitted. "The sky is highlighting the darkness."
"It is at that, or I wouldn't have seen it either," he agreed. "Even with this thing," he added, handing the spyglass back to Miranda.
"What did you see, Tarrin? I can't find it," Miranda asked.
"It's a patch of black," he told her. "I can't make anything out, and neither can Allia. Maybe it's a mountain of black stone, like that volcano island that we passed a while ago." He handed Miranda the spyglass and the visor, then carefully pointed her in the direction she needed to look. "Move slowly, now," he told her. "It's very small."
"I think—I see it!" she said happily. "You're right, it's like a black spot on the horizon."
"What do you see?" Keritanima called from the deck.
"It's not much, sister, but there's definitely something out there," Tarrin called down to her. "Just a speck on the horizon."
"More like a smudge than a speck," Miranda agreed. "But even I can see it. Kikalli's winds, Allia, you have some eyes," Miranda told her with a smile. "I would never have seen that if it hadn't been pointed out to me. It's just too small."
"Well then, that settles that," Keritanima said bluntly. "Jalis! We need to turn starboard! Allia, call out when the bow is pointing at what you see!"
"Aye, your Majesty!" Jalis shouted from the steering deck. "Helm, come to starboard, but do it gently," Tarrin heard the bobcat order his steersman from under his feet. "Listen for the Selani's call, and when you hear it, call out the compass reading and set that course."
"Aye, cap'n," the pilot acknowledged.
The entire ship waited silently as the steamship slowly began to turn starboard. They all watched Allia as she slowly turned her body to keep herself facing what she saw on the horizon, and Keritanima began to pace nervously. Tarrin looked towards the horizon, but the sun was blinding him and he wouldn't have been able to see anything anyway, for Miranda had the spyglass and Allia had the visor. Tarrin did get a general sense of how close they were by watching Allia's body. He figured that when Allia's shoulders were set squarely with the bow, they were more or less there.
She shuffled more and more towards the bow of the ship, until her shoulders finally squared up. A moment later, she called out, a sound everyone on the ship, even the Tellurian engineers that had come up from the bowels of the engine room when word was passed down to them, heard. "Now!" she shouted.
"Bearing two-five-three! Setting course, two hundred fifty three degrees, cap'n!" the Wikuni pilot reported.
"Very good, son," the captain said in a calm voice. "Let's steam for as long as we can, then set the sea anchor and wait out the night."
"Aye, Cap'n," the junior officer with him on the steering deck acknowledged.
"Well, brother, we're almost there," Allia told him as she took off the visor. "Now we know where we're going. We just have to reach it."
"I know," he said soberly. "We're another step closer. The only question is how big the hole is going to be we'll have to step over to get there. Remember, the poem said we still have one more step to go."
"Then we'll conquer that obstacle when we reach it," she said simply. "I've come to find out that when we are together, there is almost nothing we can't do."
"I hope you're right, Allia," he said fervently. "Goddess, I hope you're right."
Nobody slept well that night. Now that their destination was no longer an unknown, everyone was antsy and restless, Tarrin the worst of them. They were almost there. Almost there! Tarrin paced back and forth on the deck, constantly looking over the bow, unable to sleep, unable to even sit still for more than a few moments. The night was crisp, cool, and clear, but Tarrin hardly noticed it. Everything they had been working towards for two years had almost reached its conclusion. Everything Tarrin had done, everything he had gained, everything he had sacrificed, it was all leading up to this.
Nobody knew what to expect. They had all sat down and had a long talk after dinner, discussing what the next day may bring. The only absolutes they had were that there was one more obstacle to overcome, and there was a guardian that would be defending the Firestaff once they reached where they were going. Outside of that, nobody could offer much more than imagined problems. The problem was, though they knew where they were going, they had no idea what they would find once they got there. They didn't know if it was a small speck of an island, or a huge semi-continent. They didn't know if they would immediately find the Firestaff, or if they would have to spend days, rides, maybe even months searching the land for it. If the Firestaff was even on land. Miranda brought up that rather chilling scenario, that the Firestaff was indeed hidden under the ocean, and it would force them to find some way to counter the killing water to get it. They didn't know if the Firestaff rested within the void, or if the void would end before they got there. That was the one thing they all fervently hoped would come to pass. None of them wanted to have to face down the guardian without the power of magic to aid them. As it was, Tarrin was the only member of the group with access to magic, and it was his Druidic magic, the weaker of his two magical abilities.
The night passed for Tarrin in an almost feverish whirlwind of mental supposition, as he tried to imagine every possible thing that may stand in their way, imagine every kind of guardian he could think up, and think of ways to defeat them both with and without his Sorcery. The not knowing was what aggravated him the most, he realized after half a night of thinking about what may be. If he only knew what to expect! But that was the one thing that he didn't have, the one thing the poem didn't reveal.
But it could have been worse. They could have not found the poem, and if that were the case, there was no telling where they'd be. They may be searching old ruins in Sharadar, or scouring the inner regions of Wikuna. They may be invading Zakkar, or attempting to find the stronghold of the ki'zadun to take the information they had amassed about the Firestaff by force. They didn't know what was coming, but he could only thank the Goddess that they had gotten the information that they did have. Without that poem, the Zakkites may very well be in the lead in this most important of all races. They may have been able to figure out a way to get around the obstacles the Ancients had set down to deter people from doing exactly what they were doing, and with a little luck, they very well may have gotten to the Firestaff first.
That would have been a disaster of monumental proportions. Tarrin didn't know when it would activate, but he wasn't going to take any chances. It could be tomorrow, it could be next ride, it could be next month, it could be next year. Whenever it was, he was going to make sure nobody else had it when that day came.
Tarrin was joined on deck by the others, one by one, well before dawn. Keritanima was the first to abandon the attempt to sleep, about two hours before dawn, coming up with a blanket wrapped around her, but she was wearing the same dress she'd had on the night before. Keritanima changed her dress every day, so it was clear to him she hadn't even tried to go to sleep. But instead of pacing on the open deck, she'd been pacing in the privacy of her cabin. Dolanna came up almost immediately after Keritanima, looking a little tired and drawn. Not a few minutes later, Allia came up with Miranda, Binter and Sisska, and Camara Tal. Dar came up with Azakar and Phandebrass about a half hour later, the three of them carrying large trays with hot pastries just out of the oven in the galley, and Kimmie joined them with Sapphire riding on her shoulder not long after that. They shared the slight meal, for nobody felt like eating much, and then waited in anxious, almost tense silence for the sun to rise and Jalis to give the command to get under way.
It was the longest sunrise in Tarrin's life. They watched the false dawn come and go, then watched as the sky began to transition from the darkness to the pink hues of sunrise, until the very tip of the sun appeared on the eastern horizon. Tarrin wasn't the only one trying to will the sun to come up, but the resistant heavenly body almost seemed to be moving backwards to the Were-cat as he got more and more impatient.
"Why isn't Jalis giving the order yet?" Dar demanded in irritation. "It's light!"
"They have to wait until the sun comes all the way up, Dar," Keritanima told him. "There may be reefs around, so the lookouts need enough light to see into the water."
"What is a reef?" Allia asked.
"A shoal of rock just under the surface," Dolanna answered for the Wikuni. "Since these are uncharted waters, the captain is going to be careful. We do not want to hit a reef and founder this close to our destination. It would make the Goddess fairly angry with us."
"Slightly," Keritanima agreed. "Just keep your pants on, Dar. We'll be moving in a little bit."
After about a half an hour, they did get under way. Jalis intended to go at half speed at first, but Keritanima personally told him that he could put them under full steam or he could get out and swim. After a short and heated argument, where the captain actually backtalked his queen, Jalis knuckled under when Keritanima threatened to execute him on the spot if he didn't obey her commands immediately. Jalis reluctantly ordered full speed, and the smokestacks billowed smoke as the ship surged forward with two men looking out on the bow and three from the foremast, low enough to where the smoke of the engine didn't choke them to death.
Though he'd stayed up all night, Tarrin didn't feel in the least bit tired or sleepy. He stood watch along with the others, with Allia standing on the sterncastle with the spyglass, watching. She wasn't the only one who could see, however. Tarrin stood at the bow and watched as the tiny black dot they'd seen last night grew larger and larger, becoming visible to Camara Tal not long after sunrise, and visible to the others as they moved towards it. It was still an utter black against the horizon, without feature or form or texture, a darkness that loomed ahead of them and grew inexorably larger as time flowed by.
"I don't get it," Keritanima growled about an hour before noon. The blackness was visible to everyone now, a dark half-circle just inside the horizon, getting larger by the moment as they approached it, and it made all the sailors nervous. The most obvious thing about it was that it didn't look like land or any sort of natural feature. It looked ominously magical, and that was enough to unnerve the average superstitious sailor. "We're closer now. Why can't Allia make anything out yet?"
"I'm not sure, Kerri," Tarrin replied, looking at the blackness before them. "Maybe it is magic, like some of the sailors have been whispering. I wouldn't discount anything at this point."
The darkness got larger and larger, and as they approached it, it made the sailors more and more edgy. Tarrin was getting very anxious himself, but not because of the strangeness of what they were seeing. He was certain now that the blackness was magical, because it couldn't be very much further, and by now Allia should have been close enough to make out features. But she still saw nothing but featureless, empty black, and its lack of dimension made it hard to determine just how large it was or how far away they were. It was like a shadow looming before them, a shadow of inky black, the object casting it hidden from them.
It grew and grew and grew as they steamed towards it. By lunch, it consumed a good portion of the sky before them, and it became apparent as they neared it that it had a definite shape. It was semi-circular, with defined edges, but nothing within that border was discernable through the inky blackness.
"That just has to be magical," Tarrin growled to Camara Tal as they stood at the bow and stared at the blackness, which now extended out to the sides far enough to make Tarrin have to move his eyes to look from one edge to the other.
"I'm more worried about how far away it is," Camara Tal answered, gripping the hilt of her scabbarded sword. "It's like a big piece of darkness torn away from the night, and it has no depth. It could be a few leagues ahead, or a few hundred. There's no way to tell until we get to it."
"That's a scary thought," Tarrin grunted. "It may be a thousand longspans across. We may be hundreds of leagues away, but we're seeing it now because it's so big."
"Possible, but if that were so, I think it would have to be made by a god," Camara Tal told him. That much magical power? No mortal could do it."
"We may be dealing with something the gods left behind to protect the Firestaff, Camara."
"I know, but that seems a little—"
"Ahoy!" one of the lookouts in the rigging screamed. "Rocks ahead, Cap'n! It looks like a reef!"
"Aye," Jalis shouted from the window of the steering deck. "Should we reduce speed?"
"Aye, sir! They're about a mile ahead!"
"Aye," he acknowledged. Tarrin didn't hear him give the order to slow, but he felt the ship start to decelerate. Tarrin moved up to the rail and peered ahead, and he saw the rocks. They just barely made it over the surface of the relatively calm water, a slight disturbance in the small, gentle waves in the very clear water. Tarrin looked more and more closely, and then he scanned his eyes to one side, realizing something rather significant.
The reef extended as far as he could see to the north.
He looked south, and again, the reef extended as far as he could see to the south.
"It's continuous," Camara Tal said sourly, scanning the reef with her eyes. "I don't see a break in it anywhere."
"Allia!" Tarrin shouted. "Can you see a hole in it?"
"No, brother!" she shouted back to him. "It goes as far as I can see in both directions!"
The ship came to a gentle stop just in front of the reef. It sat just under the water, a strange corrugated jumble of stones that looked covered with sea creatures. The top of the reef wasn't level, and knobs and protrusions rose out of the water, lapped by the gentle action of the waves. Tarrin saw a strange star-shaped creature that was almost five spans across creeping over the surface of one of those jutting rocks, the water lapping against it gently as it slithered over the wet surface of the dark grayish stone. All of them gathered at the bow and took turns looking over the rail, down at the reef. It rose out of the water about fifty spans in front of them, but it rose up from the ocean bottom in a gentle incline, which put part of the reef beneath the ship. The water was very clear, and it let them look down into the water at an angle to see the part of the reef the sunlight could touch.
Keritanima came up to the bow rail and leaned over it, looking at the rocks about fifty spans ahead. "Damn," she muttered. "I knew this was going too easy."
"We need to find a passage through it," Tarrin said.
"Maybe we could have Sapphire fly out and see if she can see a break in the reef," Kimmie offered. "You said you could use Druidic magic to talk to her."
"I could, but I don't want her going too far," Tarrin said. "Since we don't know what's out here, I don't want some creature to swoop down on her when she's busy looking at the reef and eat her."
"I know one thing," Keritanima said grimly. "We're close to land."
"How do you know that?" Dar asked.
"That's how," she said, pointing towards the blackness ahead. Tarrin squinted as he peered ahead, for at first he didn't see anything. But then he saw white flecks in the blackness, and once his eyes focused on them, he saw that they were birds. Seagulls. "Birds. Those are seagulls, Dar, and they're too close to the water's surface to be migrating. They're feeding, and that means there has to be land nearby where they can land and rest."
"I didn't see those," Dar grunted, looking at the darkness.
"Do you think we're close?" Camara Tal asked.
"I have no idea, but I do know that we can't be too far away for those birds to die of exhaustion before they fly back," she answered. "With this tailwind pushing them back towards the darkness, they could come out a long way." She snorted. "But let's worry about one thing at a time. We have to get past this reef."
"Anyone have any bright ideas?" Tarrin asked.
"What else can we do, brother?" Allia asked. "We must find an opening."
"I say, that's rather narrow thinking," Phandebrass said. "We have three options, we do. We can find a way around it, we can try to go over it, or try to go through it, we can."
"And just how would we go over it?" Keritanima asked. "Or through it?"
"Over it would be easy, it would," he said. "We just make a wave that carries the ship over the top."
"And what happens if the ship bottoms out on the reef in the process?" the Wikuni asked sharply.
"Well, we just don't do that," Phandebrass replied.
Keritanima growled audibly and glared at him. "We should rephrase. Anyone have any ideas that work?"
"Without magic, our options are rather limited," Dolanna said, leaning over the rail and looking down.
Jalis came over to them and saluted the queen sharply. "The lookouts can't find a break in it, your Majesty. Before I just pick a direction and start moving, I thought you may want to decide which direction we go in."
"How far does this reef go?" Dar asked. "No, I mean how far do they usually go?"
"There's a reef in Valkar that extends for over a thousand miles," Jalis told him. "It makes the northern marches of the west coast of the continent unreachable. I've seen reefs as short as a few feet, and as long as a thousand miles, lad. There's just no telling until we find its edge, or find a hole in it."
"How long is a mile again, Kerri?" Dar asked.
"He means about three hundred leagues or so," Keritanima answered.
Dar whistled. "That'll take us days to cross, if it's really that long."
Tarrin looked down at the reef, considering. It looked natural, and it probably was, but he had the sneaking suspicion that this was another obstacle deliberately set down to hinder anyone from reaching the Firestaff. If Jalis was right and there was no way to tell how long it would take them to go around it, it would mean that they would lose precious time. Days, maybe even rides of time lost as they searched for a channel through the reef, or its end.
Tarrin looked at the reef, tuning out his friends as they debated what to do. Could this be the test the poem talked about? Where twenty may try, but only one would succeed? Of course, that reference of twenty was probably a metaphor, or just thrown in there to keep the structure of the poem consistent. If there was a one to reference, now was a good time. Of the eight magic-users in their group, only Tarrin had access to any form of magic at all. He was the only one left that could do anything about this challenge from a magical standpoint.
But what could he do? Triana and Sathon had never taught him spells to pick up ships and carry them over a reef. Even if he tried, he seriously doubted he'd live long enough to get the spell going. Doing something like that would take an incredibly powerful Druid to accomplish, someone like Triana. Tarrin knew already that he just didn't have the power to use Druidic magic to move the ship over the reef.
But as Phandebrass said, he was thinking narrow. The problem presented was an obstacle preventing the ship from moving forward. The two most common means of dealing with an obstacle that hindered progress were to either avoid the obstacle, or remove the obstacle. Tarrin couldn't avoid the obstacle, meaning he couldn't pick up the ship and get it over the reef, but he might be able to remove the obstacle. that would mean moving the reef, or at the very least, opening a hole in it wide and deep enough for the ship to pass through safely.
That may be possible. Tarrin mulled over how he may go about that using Druidic magic. He could part the stone using Druidic magic, that was an option. Part it like opening drapes. He could cut the stone, or he could use Druidic magic to pulverize it, change it into sand and let the ocean carry the sand away. He could try to use the ocean itself to ram the reef and break a hole in it as well, but that would take a whole lot of power, and he doubted he'd have the ability to use a spell like that.
Other than that, he couldn't really think of other ways to open the reef, at least not things that he would be able to do. There were any number of easy ways to open the reef that would get him killed in the process. He needed a way to affect a large amount of stone, yet do it in such a way that it made it a very easy spell to cast. Tarrin crossed his arms and glanced at a bit of motion, seeing a lynx Wikuni sitting on the barrel of one of the cannons lashed to the deck, staring at the reef—
—cannons. Cannons!
"Kerri," he said quickly, "how much gunpowder do we have on board?"
"About—that won't work, brother," she warned. "That's the first thing I thought of."
"What won't work?" Dar asked.
"Using the gunpowder to blow a hole in the reef," she answered. "The problem is that the reef is under water, and we don't have any way to ignite the kegs if they're under water. Just putting the kegs on top of the reef won't be enough, because they won't blow out a deep enough hole for the keel to get through." She grunted. "Besides, I don't think we have enough gunpowder in the first place. Donovan only let them bring on four kegs. That's enough to fire these cannons about five times each."
"Can you conjure gunpowder, Tarrin?" Kimmie asked.
"Easily," he answered.
"Tarrin, we're in a void," Keritanima told him. "We can't use magic, remember?"
"We can't use Sorcery," he said sharply. "Or Priest or Wizard magic. You forget, sister dear, I also happen to be a Druid."
Keritanima looked at him, then she laughed brightly. "I completely forgot! You can use Druidic magic in this void?"
"Yes," he assured her. "The All is everywhere. Nothing can block Druidic magic. The only thing I need to know if the kegs will explode. Will they explode if they're under water, Kerri?"
"I really don't know," she said with a sudden laugh. "But we'll find out, won't we?"
Tarrin thought it would be as easy as wedging the kegs into the reef, but Keritanima disabused him of that notion quickly. The first thing she did was send two sailors over to the reef in a longboat to see how thick the reef was on its far side. Then she had them take careful measurements of the reef's thickness at various depths, a task that required them to dive into the water with long poles that stuck up out of the water, as men on the ship gauged the distance between the poles visually. After she had the thickness of the reef, she sat down with a piece of paper and did some mathematical calculations. Tarrin didn't understand what she was doing, and she wouldn't answer him while she was doing it.
After about an hour, she finally finished what she was doing and pulled Tarrin aside. "We don't have enough gunpowder," she announced. "We'll need at least three more kegs."
"It took you three hours to figure that out?" Tarrin asked, a bit impudently.
"Would you rather have just stuck the kegs in the rocks and blown them up, then merrily rip the bottom out of my ship as we tried to squeeze through a hole that wasn't big enough?" she countered sharply.
"It would have worked," he protested. "We just have to keep doing it until we have a big enough hole."
"And it would take three times as long as my way," she snapped. "My way, we spend a little time now to avoid wasting a lot of time later. I know how much gunpowder we need and where to put it. We can blow a hole big enough for the ship in about two hours, where you'd have us out here tossing kegs of gunpowder over the rail for days!"
"Two hours?" Tarrin asked.
"Two hours," she said. "We should have a hole open by sunset. We can slip through it and anchor to the reef overnight, and set out in the morning."
"Well, if you say two hours, then I guess we'll trust you, Kerri," he acceded.
"Thank you," she said with an edge in her voice, stalking away.
Keritanima issued her orders, and her sailors carried them out quickly. The steamship backed up until it was about a quarter of a longspan off from the reef, then dropped its anchor. After that, a longboat set out with a single keg of gunpowder aboard, and two of her best swimmers, the same two that did the measuring of the reef with the poles, pulled the keg overboard. They tied lead weights to it, then slipped beneath the waves to place it where Keritanima had told them to place it. They were down for a very long time, and for a moment Tarrin thought they drowned, but then both of them surfaced, and then were pulled back aboard the longboat. As the four sailors that had ferried them over rowed back towards the steamship, Keritanima pulled Tarrin to the bow and told him what to do.
"They put the keg about twenty spans down," she told him. "They were supposed to wedge it in a crevice in the side of the reef. Can you find it and blow it up from here, or do you need to get closer?"
"I can do it from here," he said, peering into the water. He really didn't need to see it, for the All would do his aiming for him. But a good look at the keg would help him immensely. Druidic magic was heavily keyed to images, and the sharper and more detailed—and more accurate—his image, the better chance the spell would work as he desired. He already knew exactly how to use the magic to blow up the keg. Gunpowder exploded when exposed to fire, so all he had to do was create a lick of flame inside the kegs. The kegs were waterproof, which would keep the water from dousing the flame, but that was a moot point. Tarrin had seen gunpowder explode before, when Keritanima had hit the powder magazine of Sheba's pirate ship with her magic. That created an explosion that blew the pirate ship into a thousand little pieces. The instant the fire touched the gunpowder, it would cause the whole keg to explode. The water wouldn't really do anything except muffle the sound of the explosion.
"Not yet!" Keritanima said quickly. "Let my men get the longboat back over here and tie it to the steamship. That's a pretty big keg, and it should make quite a shockwave. I don't want them getting hurt."
Tarrin nodded, and as he waited for the longboat to row back over. After about five minutes, the longboat was aside the steamship, tying a rope to the anchor chain and waving up to the sailors above that they were ready.
Tarrin stood by the bow, closed his eyes, and began. He reached within, through the Cat, and made a connection to the endless power of the All. It felt warm and comforting to him, welcoming him and offering to him its power. Tarrin had already worked out how he was going to perform this task, and so his image and his intent were already prominent in his mind. He would do it in two stages. The first was a spell not of image but of intent, and that intent was to be able to see in his mind's eye an image of where the gunpowder keg was. The All responded to his request, showing him an image of the keg, with its lead weights tied around its girth, stuck in a wide crevice in the reef about twenty or so spans deep, with the sunlight shining on it in scintillating waves as the surface of the water refracted the sunlight penetrating it. Once he had that image, he distanced himself from the All and then touched it again; a Druid couldn't cast successive spells on one touch of the All, for the All would contaminate the spell cast beforehand with the new image and intent the Druid used. The new spell would conflict with the image and intent which had created the first one, causing unpredictable and often deadly results. It was the Druidic version of a Wildstrike. Sarraya had been very careful to drill that into him. To keep the mind clear of everything but the image and the intent while actively touching the All. Stray thoughts introduced variables into the formula, and the All was notorious about interpreting those unwanted thoughts or images in ways that were often quite deadly for the Druid and everyone around him. Once he felt the All touch him through the Cat, he pushed the image of the keg into the forefront of his mind, and then formed the intent that a small flame come to life within the interior of the keg. The All responded to him, seeing his image and reading his intent, then carrying out his desire.
The effect was immediate and dramatic. A white geyser of water erupted from the surface of the water, hurling bits of rock out the column of water, and a dull boom rocked the ship. Spraying seawater, like rain, and small bits of the reef stone pattered onto the deck of the steamship, as well as a few fish and sea animals that looked like aquatic scorpions.
"Nice," Kimmie mused, wiping the water off her face.
"I say, that was interesting," Phandebrass said in agreement. "I wonder if I could design a spell that would duplicate the effect. I could call it Phandebrass' Amazing Detonation, I could."
"Is that it?" Tarrin asked.
Keritanima shook her head. "Now my divers go see how much damage it did, and when they're done, they'll set another keg. It's going to take us a while to blow a hole through that, brother. It may look narrow at the surface, but it's actually pretty thick thirty spans down."
They waited as the longboat rowed back over to the reef, rowing out into water that had become cloudy with the explosion stirring up the sand and sediment in the reef, and then the two divers slipped over the side of the boat and disappeared into the water. They were down only a moment before they broached the surface of the water and scrambled back into the boat quickly, one of them screaming loud enough for them to hear him all the way over at the steamship.
"What's the matter?" Tarrin asked. They all looked to Allia, who went over to the rail and looked at the longboat.
"The screaming one had something take a bite out of his leg," she reported. "I see dark shapes circling the longboat in the water. There, one of them just broke the surface," she said, pointing.
Tarrin looked, and picked out a dark fish fin sliding back under the waves. "Shark," Keritanima said in concern. "They better get him over here quickly, so we can bandage his leg."
"The explosion must have riled them," Azakar noted, then he flushed slightly and closed his mouth.
"And attracted them to us," Camara Tal added, pointing. "Is it just me, or are there several dozen over there?"
Tarrin looked, and he had to agree. There was an absolute swarm of the dangerous fish circling the longboat as the sailors frantically rowed for the steamship, and there were many more gathering in the murky water near where the keg was detonated.
"Alright, Kerri, what do we do now?" Tarrin asked, a little acidly.
"Give me a minute," she said, her brows furrowing as the thought.
The sharks complicated things. Without being able to send divers down to assess their progress, and also to place the kegs so they did the most damage, Tarrin figured that they would have to do things the way he first thought they would, simply try to blow a big enough hole in the reef by piling the kegs on the top. Tarrin wasn't sure that was going to work now, mainly because Keritanima didn't think it would. He had learned to trust Keritanima's judgment in these kinds of things, for she was rarely wrong. Keritanima's moment turned into an extended silence, broken only when the injured sailor was brought back aboard and tended, his leg showing a rather nasty bite made by something with very wide jaws. Keritanima herself bandaged the wound, apologizing to the sailor for sending him out there to nearly get his leg ripped off. The sailor seemed flabbergasted that the queen of Wikuna would bother to take the time to even check on his condition, let alone be the one to bandage his wound. And even apologize to him!
"Alright, I'm stumped," Keritanima admitted after she finished with the sailor. "I'm not sending another man down there, not now that we know this area is infested with sharks. Anyone have any ideas?"
"How about if we fill a longboat with gunpowder, take it over there, and then sink it?" Dar proposed. "Tarrin can blow it up, and we can hope there's enough powder in the kegs to break a hole in the reef."
"Would that work?" Camara Tal asked. "You're the expert on gunpowder, Kerri."
Keritanima drummed her fingers against her muzzle. "I think it would, but it would have to be one big keg," she said. "If Tarrin only blows up one, the others may not explode underwater. I've never seen or heard of anyone trying to do this underwater before, so I just can't say for certain."
"I can Conjure as big a keg as you need, Kerri," Tarrin told her. "I can make a barrel bigger than a longboat."
"Alright, then, conjure us an iron barrel the same size as that, and then fill it with gunpowder," she prompted, pointing at one of the large water barrels that had been lashed to the deck to free space below. "That should be a good start."
Tarrin did so, and then they lowered the barrel into the longboat. It was too heavy for the boat to carry the standard complement of six, so only three sailors ferried the keg over. Keritanima shouted at them from the bow so they positioned themselves in the general vicinity of where the first barrel was set and detonated, and then they struggled considerably in their task as they heaved it over the side, very nearly capsizing the longboat in the process. The iron barrel sank like a stone, and the longboat rowed back to the steamship. Keritanima ordered them to go behind the steamship, for this explosion would be much larger than the last, and the steamship would protect the boat from the wave the detonation would create.
Once a sailor at the stern shouted that the longboat was tied up and secure, Keritanima looked to Tarrin. "Alright, brother, it's your turn," she told him.
Tarrin reached within, through the Cat, and came into contact with the All. He did the same thing he did the first time, first getting an image of the barrel, then turn around and using that image as an aiming aid to set fire to the gunpowder inside the barrel.
The water did nothing to muffle the sound of the detonation. An earsplitting BOOM shuddered the ship, the shockwave of it actually pushing the ship back as a column of water rocketed into the air, sending huge boulders of reef stone flying in every direction. The ship pulled its anchor chain taut as a huge wave generated by the explosion slammed into the ship, making it rock dangerously and throwing almost everyone down to the deck as the ship bucked like a wild horse.
They all stayed down on the deck as the last of the water and bits of reef stone rained down on them, and then there was a strange silence, the only sound being the water lapping against the ship. Then Keritanima laughed. "My, that was a big one!" she said cheerfully. "Can we do it again?"
Tarrin looked at her, then chuckled ruefully. "Children and their toys," he told her as they all picked themselves up from the deck.
"Alright, crewman, tell the longboat to row over there and see if that blew a hole in the reef!" Keritanima shouted at the crewman that had been at the stern.
"Aye, your Majesty!" he replied with a salute, then leaned over the rail and relayed the queen's instructions to the longboat.
They waited as the longboat rowed over, and the three men inside probed the churned, murky water with long poles. Encasing the gunpowder in an iron barrel seemed to have made the explosion much more powerful than using wood, despite the barrel they used being larger, and as they watched they realized that the iron-encased gunpowder had done massive damage to the reef. A huge hole had been blown out of it, nearly twenty spans wide, and it looked to pierce the reef's wall all the way to the other side.
"It's jagged, your Majesty!" one of the sailors shouted up after they rowed back to the ship. "It's roughly twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep, but it does go all the way through the reef. The problem is that it's narrow on the far side and wide on the near side!"
"Very good, crewman!" Keritanima said with a smug, victorious smile at Tarrin. "Prepare to load another barrel!"
"That's not big enough?" Tarrin asked.
"Tarrin, we need about fifty feet of width to clear it safely, and the ship draws about twenty-five feet at the keel," she answered. "We need to widen the hole. I figure we'll have it blown out wide enough with three or four more barrels."
"You're the boss," he said absently.
"That's right, and don't forget it," she winked at him.
Keritanima's solution did work. The crewman loaded another powder-filled iron barrel Tarrin Conjured, and then she had them drop it on the far side, where the opening was at its narrowest. The explosion of the barrel was no less spectacular than the first, and after the men probed the murky water with their poles, they announced that the hole was more or less evenly wide on both sides. Keritanima had Tarrin Conjure three more barrels, and they were successively dropped into the hole at the near side, the middle, and the far side successively, which systematically widened the breach even more and dug out its bottom. The five barrel bombs blew a huge, gaping hole in the reef, more than large enough for the ship to traverse safely.
"Alright, Mr. Donovan, give me your slowest speed," Jalis ordered the engineer from his sterncastle window at the Tellurian, who had come up on deck to check on the progress. "And keep your men right where they can stop the engine at a moment's notice. This is going to be a tricky piece of navigation."
"Aye, Cap'n Jalis," Donovan replied. "We'll creep through as slow as you please."
Sailors lined the rails with long poles as the steamship very carefully, very slowly set its bow into the hole the explosions created, ready to push the ship away from the jagged rocks should it drift too closely to them. The destruction of a portion of the reef created a backcurrent in the water, as water flowed from far side of the reef to the near side, forcing Jalis to have the engineers increase the ship's speed. The ship nosed into the opening, then the new current pushed the ship back out. They tried again, this time gradually increasing speed once the steersman had the ship solidly in the center of the narrow channel to overcome the resistance of the pushing current. Tarrin watched with Dar and Camara Tal as the ship slowly traversed the dangerous opening, Jalis taking no chances with the ship as the men lining the rails kept their poles ready to push off the reef should the current draw the ship towards it. A man at the bow threw a weighted line into the water and called out the depth every few seconds, quickly reeling the line back in then tossing it out again as soon as he had the lead weight in his hand.
Jalis' patience paid off, as the stern of the ship cleared the reef, and the ship once again was surrounded by nothing but water. All the sailors gave out a cheer when the captain announced they were clear, clapping each other on the back and putting their long poles away. Tarrin looked back to the reef, seeing the surface of the water eddy as the currents beneath flowed through the new opening. The sun would be setting very soon, so the captain ordered the anchor dropped, preparing to wait out the night and set out again in the morning.
"Well, that's that," Camara Tal noted, looking back with Tarrin. "The question is, what next?"
"That's a good question. I wish I knew the answer," Tarrin grunted.
It was another night of anxiousness, but it wasn't quite as bad as it had been the night before. The restless night caught up with almost everyone, and everyone, even Tarrin, had very little trouble sleeping that night. Getting past the reef relaxed everyone, for Tarrin was sure that the reef was the last obstacle the poem mentioned. They had cleared all the challenges, and now there was nothing between them and that strange blackness ahead, the place that all of them were absolutely convinced held the Firestaff, nothing but seemingly empty ocean. Tarrin felt that the hardest parts had been put behind them, and now it would be a simple matter of sailing up to the darkness and passing through it to see what was on the other side.
The morning's mood was quite a change from the morning before. Everyone had been quiet and sober and serious the day before, but the mood among Tarrin's friends now was one of exuberance and enthusiasm. Tarrin wasn't the only one that felt that they'd cleared the majority of the obstacles, and though all of them knew that there could be more challenges ahead—the poem mentioned nothing about the mind-affecting magic, or the storm—they felt that they could overcome them. They all knew they weren't there yet, but for the moment, at least, all of them were celebrating penetrating the reef.
The reef had quite a surprise for them the next morning. Tarrin heard the sailors whispering about it when he went up on deck and got something to eat, so he went to look. Needless to say, he was quite surprised when he looked back.
The hole in the reef was gone.
It was like someone had come along behind them and put all the rock back into the reef wall, leaving it intact and again representing a barrier to anyone that wished to cross it. Tarrin was a bit shocked to see that, for it had to have been a magical effect, but he felt nothing. He wasn't sure how it could be done, since only Druidic magic worked in the void. Was there a Druid nearby that was so powerful that they could do something like that?
Though it was a strange and obviously magical phenomenon, none of the sailors seemed all that worried about it. After all, their queen had gotten them through it once before, so they could simply do the same thing again when they left and get through it again. What worked once would easily work again.
The happy mood evaporated after the ship got moving, and the blackness before them began to loom. It loomed more, and more, and more, the darkness expanding to take up more and more of the sky before them, growing larger and larger. By midmorning, the darkness swallowed up almost the entirety of the horizon before them, a daunting sight to say the least. They still had no idea how far away it was, what it was, or what would happen when they reached it. The sailors got more and more worried as the darkness seemed to tower over them, rising high into the sky and consuming the entire view ahead. It was like sailing into oblivion.
Just before lunch, Allia gave the call that they all had been waiting for. "I can see its border now!" she announced loudly from the roof of the sterncastle. "I can see where the darkness touches the water!"
"How far away is it?" Keritanima asked loudly.
"It is a good way inside the horizon," she called back. "It took me a while to understand what I was seeing. If we keep at this speed, we will reach it in about three hours."
"Jalis, are we moving at full speed?" Keritanima shouted.
"No, your Majesty, we're moving at three-quarters right now," Jalis called back. "Donovan wanted us to slow a little so he could do something."
"Well, tell him it's over," she ordered. "I want full speed!"
"Yes, your Majesty, full speed," Jalis acknowledged.
The ship sped up a little after the order was given, and they all watched and waited.
The darkness expanded even more as they approached it, as sailors moved jerkily and had trouble keeping their attention on what they were doing, as Camara Tal sharpened her dagger in preparation, the Amazon going down to change out of her leather halter and coming back up with her breastplate on. Azakar did the same, going down and changing into his armor. Kimmie and Phandebrass went down and studied their spells, even though they couldn't cast them, and Dolanna, Allia, Dar, and Keritanima grouped together unconsciously, should they suddenly find themselves in a need to Circle. Miranda, Binter, and Sisska seemed the only ones unmoved by the situation, the mink Wikuni sitting sedately on a folding canvas chair near the bow, knitting away as Binter and Sisska stood silent vigil over the queen and her maid.
After two hours, the darkness was a tangible, discernable wall. It rose up to dominate the sky before them, and Tarrin could see its edge where it bordered the sea. It was a wall of massive proportions, and as they neared it, he could sense its power. It was a tangible thing, he could feel, but what surprised him most was that it was Sorcery.
It was a Ward!
As they got closer and closer, he could make out its construction. It was definitely a Ward, the weaving of a Ward was unique, one of unfathomably complicated weaving. Tarrin couldn't make out a tenth of it, and the tenth he could make out he couldn't understand. Its construction was so vast, so complicated, so intricately detailed that he didn't think any mortal mind could have managed to weave a spell so unbelievably complex. Was this another spell of the Goddess? He didn't sense her unique signature in the weaving. There was a precise exactness in the weaves the Goddess wove herself that seemed to be missing from this one, but he couldn't imagine anyone other than the Goddess doing something like that. It was so big, so complicated, Tarrin couldn't even pick its weaving apart enough to understand just what the Ward was designed to defend against. It had to have a purpose, a thing it was designed to prevent from passing through it. It was the fundamental operation of a Ward.
Keritanima and Dolanna began to get a sense of it as they got closer and closer, Keritanima's eyes widening and Dolanna putting her hand over her mouth. "Tarrin, is that Sorcery?" Dolanna asked in wonder. "I can—it is unbelievable!"
"It's a Ward," he said with a nod.
"Well, one thing's for sure, it looks like the void's going to end right at that wall of darkness," Keritanima said.
Tarrin nodded. It was hard to sense through the Ward, because of its magic, but he could indeed sense strands on its far side. The Ward marked the border of the void.
"How did they make it black?" Dar asked. "Wards are supposed to be invisible to the eye."
"I have no idea," Tarrin said. "I can't understand a fraction of what I'm seeing. It's just too complicated."
About a half an hour later, they reached the edge of the darkness. It was indeed a titanic wall of utter darkness rising up out of the sea. It loomed over the steamship like a Giant looming over a mouse, the sun preparing to pass behind it and leave the steamship in shadow. Jalis ordered the ship to stop about half a longspan from the edge of it, and all the sailors stared at it with wild eyes, many of them with shaking hands. Tarrin had to admit, it did look quite intimidating and frightening. They couldn't see through it, so they had no idea what was on the other side. It could be empty ocean, or a coastline could be lurking mere longspans on the other side of that wall of darkness.
"Amazing," Dolanna said. "We know it is shaped like a dome because we could see it as we approached. But this close, it looks like a flat wall."
"Well, the water is passing through it," Keritanima said, pointing to where the waves disappeared into the darkness. "That's a start."
"What are we going to do now?" Dar asked.
"We can't try to go through it until we know what the Ward was designed to stop, and what steps it takes," Dolanna said. "If that is a killing Ward, the last thing we want to do is sail through it."
"Good point," Dar said, paling slightly.
"Well, Tarrin, feel like a little ride?" Keritanima asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You, me, and Dolanna are going over there in a longboat," she told him. "I think between the three of us, we can figure out what the Ward does."
"It's a start," he mirrored her former words.
The longboat was lowered, but not after a heated fight between Jalis and Keritanima. Jalis wasn't about to let the queen run off into an unknown, dangerous situation, but Keritanima wasn't about to stay behind. Jalis was almost treasonous, threatening to put Keritanima in irons for her own good, then Keritanima countered by telling him that if he tried that, he'd be swimming home. Jalis lost in the end, simply because Keritanima pulled rank on him, but he did manage to get her to agree to take a full crew armed with muskets as a precaution. Binter also accompanied them, his huge hammer in his hands and ready to defend the queen from whatever may jump out of the darkness to attack them.
The longboat rowed up to the wall of darkness carefully, slowly, and then the sailors pulled in the oars and dropped a sea anchor to try to keep the ship stationary. All three of the Weavespinners leaned towards the Ward, an inky wall of ultimate blackness, and they tried to understand what it was and what it did. That much closer to it, Tarrin could make out its weaving much better, but it was still an unbelievably complicated, multi-layered weave of stunning proportions, and its function was hidden within its mind-boggling complexity. After nearly a half an hour of quiet, intense study, Tarrin blew out his breath and leaned back. "It's just too big," he sighed. "I can see its weaving, but I can't make out what it's supposed to do."
"Me either," Keritanima growled.
"Nor can I, so I guess now it comes time for experimentation." Dolanna picked up an oar and pushed it towards the Ward, but it passed through. "So, it does not stop objects," she noted, setting the oar down and reaching out with her bare hand.
Before Tarrin could react, Dolanna reached out and tried to touch the Ward.
His heart about leaped out of his chest when he saw that, but to his ultimate relief, her hand touched the Ward as if it were a solid object. She laid the palm of her hand against it and pushed, which only made the longboat drift backwards.
"It looks like it's designed to act as a physical barrier to living things," Dolanna said. "Or perhaps certain living things. The birds we saw earlier may be able to pierce the Ward, but it obviously will repel a human."
"Let's see," Keritanima said, reaching out with her hand. It too struck the Ward as if it were a solid object. "It's amazing," she whispered. "I can feel the power of it under my hand! It's incredible!"
Tarrin reached out as well, his paw reaching out and making contact—
—then it passed through! White light erupted from the blackness around Tarrin's wrist as his paw passed through the Ward, and he felt an blasting surge of magical power assault him, like white-hot steel placed into his paw. The power of the Weave conducted through the Ward, entering him, filling him to his capacity in the blink of an eye. Magelight exploded around his body in a blinding flash, startling two of the sailors so badly that they fell overboard. Tarrin felt paralyzed by the contact, unable to move, unable to do anything but try to fight back against the onslaught of magical energy that sought to fill him. At that moment, he realized that even a sui'kun could be destroyed by the power of the Weave, as its power sought to fill him to such a capacity that the energy reacted with itself and destroyed him. Clamping his jaws, biting off the tip of his tongue, Tarrin set a foot against the side of the longboat and tried to pull away, but the Ward had his paw in a vice-like grip, like the hand of a Giant holding onto him, and he couldn't move it.
The power became pain, a pain he had not felt since that day in the desert when Spyder had provoked him into crossing over. He could feel the power, feel its heat, and though the heat did him no harm, the power itself was starting to infuse his every cell, his every tiniest part. Tarrin's flesh and skin and fur began to glow with the same light as the aura that surrounded him as the power flowed into him like water, and he the vessel.
Fight back! the voice of the Goddess reached him, though it was distant, fuzzy in his struggles. Fight back, kitten! If you don't master it, it will destroy you!
Tarrin clenched his eyes shut and tried to center himself. Fight back. He had to resist the power, or take control of what was trying to send it into him. It was like a fight between Sorcerers, as one tried to overcharge the other and force him to let go of the Weave or be Consumed. His adversary was the stronger opponent, and that made Tarrin go on the defensive. He used every trick he'd learned from Spyder and through trial and error, channeling the flow of the power into a weave, a weave of pure, unmitigated power, and then he focused it in his free paw and drove it into the Ward, even as his free paw drove into the blackness. Tarrin used the power against itself, channeling what was flowing into him into an eruption of all seven flows, flows that radiated out from his paw. They flailed into the matrix of flows that made up the Ward, and whenever a flow made contact with a flow from the same Sphere, the two flows cancelled one another out. The Ward was attacking the integrity of Tarrin's body, so Tarrin retaliated by using the power of the Ward to fuel a spell that would attack the integrity of the Ward. Tarrin's spell slashed through the weave that made up the Ward as the flows Tarrin fed back into the Ward caused the weaving of it to unravel, as Tarrin's spell actively attacked it. It happened quickly, too quickly to follow, but Tarrin realized that he'd done serious damage to the integrity of the Ward around his paws, enough that he felt the vice-like grip on his paw loosen. Tarrin was about to jerk both his paws out of the Ward, but he felt the power roaring into him suddenly ease, becoming a trickle that he could easily control.
The weave of the Ward actively altered, right around his paws. The black surface of the Ward shimmered like ripples on the surface of a pond, radiating outward. The ripples intensified, and then the Ward's blackness broke up, going from a featureless, intimidating wall to a barrier of black mist, its edge defined but its appearance looking intangible. The size of the disturbance was rather impressive, nearly a hundred spans high and a hundred spans wide, and Tarrin could sense that the dimensions of the disturbance were similar under the water. It was a circular area of change.
"Tarrin, what just happened?" Dolanna asked fearfully, reaching out as if to touch him, but not sure if she should.
Tarrin was panting to recover his breath. Goddess, that was close! He'd never been… manhandled like that before! Spyder's attacks seemed gentle compared to what he'd just experienced! Tarrin's attention was taken up by the Ward, and he ignored Dolanna as he tried to understand what had just happened. The Ward's weaving had changed, its fundamental nature altered, but he didn't do it. The Ward had changed itself after Tarrin nearly disrupted that parts of it he was touching, and changed itself over a wide area. Tarrin had done something to trigger this, a programmed response of some sort.
But what did he do?
Keritanima reached towards the misty barrier, but this time her hand penetrated into it. Her eyes widened and she jerked her hand out. "It felt like ants crawling all over me!" she said.
"Tarrin, whatever you did, it has altered the Ward so we can pass through it," Dolanna said in surprise, putting her own hand in.
Pass through it. Pass. Tarrin looked at her, sweat forming on his brow as he maintained control over the Ward as it still tried to fill him with power, the urgency of the flow becoming stronger and stronger every moment. The poem said only one in twenty could allow them to pass beyond the Weave. The reef wasn't the last challenge. This was!
"It's starting to fight back again, Dolanna," he said in sudden concern. "I think this is what the poem was talking about. The Ward reacted to me when I touched it, and I had to fight it for control. I think I accidentally opened a hole in it when I managed to overcome its attack, but I don't know how long it's going to last."
Though his train of thought was scattered, and it showed in how his words bounced around from subject to subject, Dolanna seemed to follow him. "This is why we needed you," she realized. "Only you could conquer the Ward and grant us entry."
"Speaking of entry, we'd better do some entering quickly," Keritanima said urgently. "If it's starting to resist Tarrin, we can't waste any time."
"That is dangerous, Kerri," Dolanna said. "We do not know what is on the other side."
"We just have to show a little faith that the Goddess isn't leading us astray," she said with an impish smile, standing up in the boat and looking back to the steamship. "Tarrin opened the Ward!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "Get the steamship through, and do it now! He can't hold it open for very long!"
Tarrin heard no reply, as he devoted more and more attention to the Ward, and how it was trying to overcome whatever it had done to itself. Tarrin could feel the weave try to realign itself the way it had been before, and he realized he had to actively put his paw in to stop that. He didn't know what he was doing, but he drew from the Weave through the Ward, using it to make indirect contact to the strands beyond the Ward, and quickly wove together a monstrous weave of pure Divine. He wedged that into the matrix of the Ward, locking the flows in place like nailing a wedge under a door to keep it open. The flows of the Ward resisted Tarrin's attempt to stop them, but the flows did indeed stop trying to rearrange themselves back into their prior organization, which would cause the Ward to attack him again.
"Tell them to hurry," Tarrin said through gritted teeth. "I can't hold it open much longer!"
Tarrin struggled to hold the Ward in its current state as the steamship's engine roared to life, audible to them, and it started surging forwards. Tarrin didn't look, didn't think of anything but maintaining his spell, struggling to hold the Ward open as the resistance it posed grew stronger and stronger with each passing moment. Tarrin's paws began to itch and got progressively colder as he kept the wedge in the Ward, prevented it from closing on itself and rearrange back to its former state. "Where are they?" Tarrin hissed, his tail sticking straight out as his body strained, almost as if he were trying to hold the breach open with his bare paws.
"They're passing us right now, Tarrin," Keritanima told him. "Throw down a rope and pull us through behind you!" Keritanima shouted.
Tarrin was losing. The edges of the altered Ward were beginning to collapse as the force exerted against him became stronger than what he could resist. Tarrin retracted his holding weave of Divine, pulled it down to make it more concentrated, and though he couldn't see it, the men on the ship did. They saw the misty hole suddenly shrink visibly, the top of it just over the top of the mast as the bow and amidships passed into the black swirling mist. Tarrin was forced to give more and more ground to the inexorable pressure being exerted against his weaving, being exerted against him, and sweat rolled profusely from his brow as he struggled to retreat to a position where his Divine weave could set itself and hold its position against the closing hole. Tarrin felt the longboat suddenly yank forwards, and the cold sensation passed through his body as the longboat was pulled through the breach. It lasted a long moment, and then he felt warmth on his paws, spreading up his arms, and then across his body. Tarrin felt the tip of his tail come free of the Ward, and when he lost contact with it, his Divine weave was crushed by the pressure of the Ward. From the outside, the effect was startlingly abrupt. With a sudden snap, the misty black of the Ward shuddered back into featureless black, and the hole Tarrin opened closed.
Tarrin opened his eyes, letting go of the Weave and feeling his body throb a bit from the effort. From the inside, the blackness wasn't there, and he looked up into a clear, beautiful sky. He realized that the blackness was an Illusion, an Illusion that was only visible from the outside. The area inside the Ward was not a void; in fact, there was such a concentration of strands that it made his ears buzz slightly. The place had the same feel as the Tower of Six Spires, that same sense of magic charging the very air itself, but here it was even stronger. The power of the Weave literally saturated the air, and there were so many strands that the ghostly sight of them almost threatened to overwhelm his vision, hide the physical objects that were behind them. It took him a moment to adjust himself to it, to remind himself to ignore the ghostly images of the strands and concentrate on the solid things behind them, things that became more easy to see and sharper as he tuned the strands out of his vision. There were birds soaring on the gentle wind before them, he could see, soaring over something that made his heart leap to see.
It was an island. A very large island, with the towering cone of a volcano raising up from its north side. They were very far away from it, but even from that distance, he could see the green of the grass and the trees, could see that it was a lush, beautiful place. It looked to be about thirty longspans across or so, and its distance put it a few hours' travel away by steamship.
"We, we made it," Tarrin said in relief, looking at Keritanima. But instead of seeing joy or relief on her face, she looked frightened. "Kerri, what's wrong?"
"Tarrin? Hold on," she said, raising a hand. She caused a ball of light to appear over her hand, and she held it up to him. "We made it, didn't we?"
"If course we did!" he told her. "We're inside the Ward, Kerri, and there's an island in front of us!"
"How can you see it?" she asked, peering in that direction. "Tarrin, it's as black as pitch in here!"
"No it's not," he protested. He looked to the steamship, seeing that they were lighting lanterns, and he heard them calling out to the longboat fearfully. What was wrong with them? It was broad daylight, why on earth did they need to light lanterns? "It's the middle of the day!"
"Alright, one of us lying," Keritanima said sharply. "I can't see my hand in front of my face!"
"Well, everything's as clear as day to me," he told her.
"Amazing," Dolanna said. "Tarrin, you can see?"
"It's broad daylight, Dolanna," he told her.
"I can barely see you with Kerri's light," Dolanna told him, squinting in his direction. "It is like the air itself is swallowing up the light. I cannot see the steamship at all, but I can hear them talking."
"It has to be some kind of magical spell put on us by the Ward when we passed through it," Keritanima said. "Let's get back the ship and see who's been affected, and try to come up with a way to counter it." She looked around. "Tarrin, I can't see the steamship. Could you guide us back to it?"
"Alright," he said, shifting to Wikuni to address the four rather nervous sailors in the ship. "Alright men, set your oars. The steamship is just a little starboard of us, about three hundred spans away."
"A little more than hundred fifty feet," Keritanima translated for the Wikuni.
"Let's go nice and slow," Tarrin told them. "Just keep calm and row steady, and we'll be there in just a few minutes."
"Aye, sir," one of them said in a shaky voice. "You heard the man, set oars," he ordered his fellow sailors.
The sailors rowed carefully, and Tarrin looked around. The island looked inviting, but this magical effect on the others was a bit disconcerting. Why hadn't he been affected? Had anyone else managed to avoid the spell's effect? Tarrin was a little surprised that it had done that, that it could affect everyone who passed through it, but there was no magical spell or effect that could not be countered or removed. They would just have to figure out what caused it and engineer a remedy. And now that they were out of the void, that meant that all of them, even Kimmie, Phandebrass, and Camara Tal, could bend their magic to the task. He was confident that this problem was an easy one to overcome.
Tarrin guided them to the ship, looking at the island. He didn't feel anxious or worried anymore, at least not yet. For a long moment, he simply reveled in the fact that they'd made it. He was sure of it. Somewhere on that island, the Firestaff was laying, waiting for them to come and claim it.
All they had to do now was find it.
"Well, my friends, I think we are here," Dolanna chuckled. "You said there was an island, Tarrin?"
"Yes, a couple of hours ahead."
"Then that is probably our destination," she nodded.
"Well, my friends, let me be the first to welcome us to the end of our journey," Keritanima said with a slight smile. "It won't be long now."
"Indeed," Dolanna agreed.
"Since I can't see my hand in front of my face, I think we could give this place a fitting name. Let's call it the Shadow Realm."
Tarrin stood up and grabbed a dangling rope from the winch that had lowered the longboat, looking at Keritanima. If anything, he realized, it was a fitting name. An island protected by a dome of darkness, that cast shadow over the eyes of those who managed to pass through, making day seem like night to them. "It fits," Tarrin agreed.
Soon, their journey would be over, Tarrin realized with a sigh. Somewhere in here the Firestaff was hidden, and all they had to do was find it.
Somewhere in the Shadow Realm.