dren 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 haltar 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 lonboat 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 litereally 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 adress the four rather nervous sailors in the ship.  "Alright men, set your oars.  The steamship is just a little starbord 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 revelled 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 j