Authors note: Read and Review. It's going to be a nice change from the ordinary.

Disclaimer: The Black Jewel Trilogy and Gundam Wing does not belong to me

Darkness Within

Chapter Seven

***

"What's your name, Cat?"

"Mariemeia."

He grinned. "Nice name but I think Cat suits you just as well."

She snarled.

"See?" He hesitated, but he had to ask. Zuultah's guessing he'd killed that slave and knowing for sure would make a difference when he was stretched between the whipping posts. "Is your family visiting Lady Zuultah. The Queen of Pruul."

"What's Pruul?"

"This is Pruul." Duo waved a hand to indicate the land around them and then swore in Eyrien when the chains rattled. He swallowed the last curse when he noticed the intense, interested look on her face. "Since you're not from Pruul and your family isn't visiting, where are you from?" When she hesitated, he tipped his head toward the boat. "I can keep a secret."

"I'm from Chaillot."

"Chai-" Duo bit back another curse. "Do you understand Eyrien?"

"No." Mariemeia grinned at him. "But now I know some Eyrien words."

Should he laugh or strangle her? "How did you get here?"

She fluffed her hair and frowned at the rocky ground between them. Finally she shrugged. "Same way I get to other places."

"You ride the Winds?" he yelped.

She raised a finger to test the air.

"Not breezes or puffs of air." Duo ground his teeth. The Winds. The Webs. The psychic roads in the Darkness."

Mariemeia perked up. "Is that what they are?"

He managed to stop in mid-curse.

Mariemeia leaned forward. "Are you always this prickly?"

"Most people think I'm a prick, yes."

"What's that mean?"

"Never mind." He chose a sharp stone and drew a circle on the ground between them. "This is the Realm of Terreille." He placed a round stone in the circle. "This is the Black Mountain. Ebon Askavi, where the Winds meet." He drew straight lines from the round stone to the circumference of the circle. "These are tether lines." He drew smaller circles within the circle. "These are radial lines. the winds are like a spider web. You can travel on the tether or the radial lines, changing direction where they intersect. There's a Web for each rank of the Blood Jewels. The darker the Web, the more tether and radial lines there are and the faster the wend is. You can ride a Web that's your Jewel rank or lighter. You can't ride a Web darker then your Jewel rank unless you're traveling inside a Coach being driven by someone strong enough to ride that Web or you're being shielded by someone who can ride that Web. If you try, you probably won't survive. Understand?"

Mariemeia chewed on her lower lip and pointed out a space between the strands. "What is I want to go there?"

Duo shook his head. "You'd have to drop from the Web back into the Realm at the nearest point and Travel some other way."

"That's not how I got here," She protested.

Duo shuddered. There wasn't a strand of any web around Zuultah's compound. Her court was deliberately in one of those blank spaces. The only way to get here directly from the Winds was by leaving the Web and gliding blind through the Darkness, which, even for the strongest and the best, was a chancy thing to do. Unless...

***

Ha! I ended this chapter here and you have to what for the next one. I'm so cruel!. For those of you who do not know, I'm going for 100,000 words and more chapter then any of you would care to count.