Vala gave a tentative nod. "I see, but I don't under-stand magic."

"Dimensional twisting," Galaeron explained, "to make the shadowshell one-sided." Vala gave him a blank look.

"So nothing can leave," he said. "Anything that passes into the shadow goes all the way around the shell and comes out where it entered. It would be like stepping through a gate and always returning to the same garden."

"Not much gardening in Vaasa," Vala commented, trying to wrap her mind around the idea of twisting a dimension. "You can tell that just by watching?"

Galaeron looked at her askance. "The magic isn't difficult." His expression grew distant and dark, and he peered through a section of uncompleted curtain into the black depths beyond. "If I can understand it, so can they."

" They,' Galaeron?" Vala asked. She didn't like the emphasis Galaeron had placed on the word they-or the look that had come to his eyes. "The Shadovar?"

"No." Galaeron touched two buckles, and his Evereskan chain mail loosened its form-fitting embrace. "Them. You know." He continued to speak as he pulled off his armor. "They're out there, somewhere there in the dark."

"Who, Galaeron?" Vala asked, more concerned about what had come over Galaeron than what was lurking in the dark. "The phaerimm?"

Galaeron nodded. "Giant scaly slugs that've been down here in the dark for a long time, since before I felt the cave breathe, since before I followed that little crack down here to this place no one has ever left."

He let his chain mail breeches clink to the ground, then waded out into the water, kicking cave pearls loose with every step.

"They were out there then," he said, "and they're out there now, lurking in the dark, their tails just aching to stick someone with an egg."

"Galaeron, you know that can't be." Vala was fumbling at her own buckles, struggling to remove her heavy scale mail. "Wait!"