The Coral Kingdom

worked visibly to hold her tongue. Clearly the situation called for urgency. . and cooperation.

'You are right… Your Majesty. It has been too long since I have seen a human. I had come once more to think of you as the group that is the danger, instead of remembering the individuals who were my friends. Forgive my lack of grace.'

'I understand,' Robyn answered. 'Now-what was that thing? And where is it going?'

They gathered the horses while they talked, mounting an elf behind Alicia and Hanrald, who were the best riders.

Pawldo! He's lost-gone forever, Alicia realized with a tearing pain in her heart. Her eyes blurred, and she went through the motions of riding without thinking. It took a great effort to clear her head enough to listen to the conversation between Robyn and Brigit.

'… not from this world, nor any place I have ever heard described,' the elfwoman was saying. 'There are legends, more than a millennia old, of a three-legged giant who preyed upon the elves. I cannot help but wonder if this is an incarnation of the Elf-Eater.' She said nothing about the Fey-Alamtine or the recent flight of the Thy- Tach.

'It is most assuredly a being from one of the Lower Planes,' Keane observed, riding beside the pair, 'requiring a very powerful force to call it hence-not an easy gate to open nor to control.'

'Gate?' Brigit's face had gone pale, though she said nothing further. She looked furtively away from Alicia as the princess stared, puzzled, at the elven horsewoman.

'Can we send it back … to its own plane?' asked the queen.

'Not a chance that I know of,' said Keane, before turning to Brigit. 'Unless you have some wizardry in this valley of yours that goes beyond anything I've ever seen!'

'I fear not,' replied Brigit. 'From what I've seen of your powers, no elven sorcerer could hope to offer something beyond your ken.'

'If we can't send it away, we'll have to kill it,' observed Brandon, who had been brooding in silence since the battle. His face focused into a grimace of determination as he spoke. It was obvious that his anger had focused into this clear and warlike purpose.

'Yes,' agreed Brigit simply.

But none of them had any idea how.

Deirdre reclined on her bed, enjoying the spectacle in the mirror. She had been thrilled by the battle with the Elf-Eater, shocked-and horribly fascinated-by Pawldo's gruesome death, and now intrigued by the challenge presented by the extraplanar beast.

She wondered, for a moment, why she felt no sorrow, no grief, over the death of the halfling she had known all her life. True, she had always thought the Lord of Lowhill a somewhat pompous stuffed shirt, but she had seen him several times a year throughout her life, and he had been a good friend of her parents. Nevertheless, his death triggered no particular emotion in the youngest Kendrick.

The specter of the Elf-Eater, on the other hand, drew her attention with a secret, forbidden excitement. The memory of her recent readings thrilled in her blood, for she now understood how the gates and the planes worked.

She doubted whether the Elf-Eater could be slain. Such was the root of its might that its true life-force existed in some nether place far removed from the world of the Realms. Without access to that soul, those who attacked the beast could at most hope to vanquish the incarnation appearing in the present time and place. If that were accomplished, the thing would be forced back to its lair.

Yet even that relatively straightforward task, she thought, may well prove beyond the abilities of the elves and their human allies. In her readings, the task of controlling a beast such as this required careful research and diligent preparation.

Research? Her lips curled in a tight smile. She rose, padding across the floor in her bare feet to the table where stood her great stack of books. Without hesitation, she lifted several tomes out of the way, found the one that she wanted, and returned to her bed.

There she started to read.

A vast ridge, emerald green in color, loomed beside Sinioth. Soon the towers of great manors, lairs to the noble scrags of the Coral Kingdom, dotted the rolling sea bottom. Great fields of kelp, tended by sahuagin overseers and mermen and dolphin slaves, drifted through the warm currents overhead, while a rolling horizon of coral edifices and dark, green-shaded valleys sprawled in all directions.

Sinioth, in the body of the giant squid, swam with the king of the sahuagin, Sythissal. In these depths, the body of evil's avatar showed as a murky shadow on the coral seabed-the huge, blunt trunk, the long tentacles trailing behind, the powerful flukes driving the creature through the water. The humanoid fishman swam with powerful kicks of his legs, eager to obey the commands of his great master. Together the two would make known the wishes of Talos.

The approach of the giant squid drew scrags and sahuagin, the inhabitants of the submarine city of Kyrasti, from their towers and domes. Great legions of the finned, fanged humanoids swam behind Sinioth as he approached the highest reef, climbing again to where the dark water gave way to soft shades of green and blue.

Before him loomed a place of towering spires. Curved domes of clear shell arched over many enclosed dwellings, while other places spiraled upward, open to the sea on all sides.

A great thrumming sound boomed through the sea, summoning the warriors and the nobles of the Coral Kingdom. A huge scrag swam forth from the palace gates, trailing delicate chains of gold and silver.

This mighty sea troll stood more than ten feet tall when he settled his webbed feet on the coral stair. His scaled skin rippled over folds of taut sinew, and his mouth gaped, sharklike, to reveal rows of needle-sharp teeth. Unlike his smaller cousins, the sahuagin, the scrag had no row of sharp spines down his back, but his head was covered with a kelplike growth of hair that waved about his face in the current, concealing his mouth one moment and then drifting aside at the next.

'Greetings, Master,' gurgled this mighty one, floating forward to prostrate himself before the giant squid. 'Welcome to Kyrasti, to the palace of Krell-Bane, King of the Sea. Our master, Talos, has brought us together for a great cause!'

Yet even as he groveled, the huge sea troll looked sideways at his new masters, his eyes reflecting jealousy, resentment. . and hatred.

6

Shattered Glass

'Flee! The vengeance of the gods comes upon us!' A dozen panic-stricken elves stumbled toward the causeway leading to Chrysalis. Some of them bled from horrible wounds, and all of them shambled with the half- dead gait of complete exhaustion.

'The trout farm!' gasped one of the Llewyrr, collapsing before a pair of guards at the start of the causeway. 'We're the only ones to survive!'

'What?' demanded the guard. 'What was it?'

'Horror!' groaned the elf. 'I don't know what it was … it was huge! And it killed-it killed everyone!!'

As soon as they got this much of an answer, garbled as it was by fear, one of the watchmen raced toward the city gates, crying a general alarm.

Myra, ranking sister knight in the city, heard the commotion at her post near those silver portals. She raced up the winding stairs into one of the needlelike spires that lined the city's walls. In moments, she heard the shouted explanations from the causeway and ordered the city's permanent garrison of warriors to muster outside the gates.

Where was Brigit? The question loomed paramount in her mind. She knew that today the captain had intended to patrol the same valley of the Fey-Alamtine and the trout farm. Cold fear began to tighten her heart as