"Troy Denning - Return of the Archwizards 2 - The Siege" - читать интересную книгу автора (Denning Troy)

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 theyтАФor 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!"

She was furious with herself for being caught off guard; she had seen him
slipping toward dejection but allowed herself to be taken in by his
reassurances.
"Galaeron, you're imagining things."
He half turned, a wild look in his eyes, and spoke over his shoulder. "You
know how they like that, Vala, putting an egg in some wretch's gut and
watching it grow until it's as big as his arm and squirming up his throat.
They love that. It's the only thing they love at all."
Vala let her armor clank to the stone and splashed in after him, her shins
still covered by her greaves. The Change had never been this deranged before.
"There aren't any phaerimm," she called, loudly enough to draw the attention
of the Shadovar. "Prince Escanor checked."
"No, he didn't. Not well enough." Galaeron sank to his chin as the bottom
dropped away beneath him, then floated back to the surface and began to swim
toward the curtain. "They're out there. It makes sense. They have to be
there."
Vala reached the drop-off and swam after him, half breaststroking and half
treading water because the weight of her greaves prevented her from floating
her legs to the surface.
"Maybe they don't know where we are," she suggested. "Or maybe they couldn't
get here. Not everyone can just turn into a shadow and slip down a crack, you
know."