Myra flew from her saddle as her lance broke in her hands. She crashed into the monster's shell, hearing bones snap in her shoulder and arm. Involuntarily she cried out in pain as she dropped to the paved street, groaning and helpless in the very shadow of the beast.
One of the sister knights died instantly from a broken neck, but the fate of the others was just as certain-and infinitely more horrible. Haze filled Myra's mind with fiery agony. She remembered the gate, when the monster had left her on the ground in search of other prey. This time, she knew, she would not be so lucky.
Stunned and immobile, the surviving knights watched helplessly or struggled feebly as the beast picked them up, one by one, and gulped them into the drooling pit of its mouth. Myra cried out in rage as she watched her comrades perish-but then a sturdy tentacle grasped her waist. She punched at it, trying in vain to draw her sword- but in the next moment, she followed the other brave sisters into the mindlessly devouring mouth.
That task completed, the Elf-Eater raised itself above the scene of its gory repast, ignoring the injured horses that kicked and whinnied at its feet. Before the monster, glittering in the sunlight like a magnet of beauty, stood the Argen-Tellirynd, the Palace of the Ages.
Deirdre read for what seemed like a long time. Gradually, however, she found that her mind couldn't concentrate on the words. Instead, she found herself looking at the table, at the silvered glass propped there.
At first, she had purposely turned the mirror to the side, so that she couldn't see her face when she looked up from her reading. But after two hours, she grew restless. Rising to pace, she looked into the glass as she passed. Finally she turned it to face the chair and returned to her tome. She found it strangely comforting to look up and see the image of herself, the great leather-bound volume covering her lap.
She wanted to see the monster again, but the mere thought of projecting the image in the mirror caused her temples to throb and her eyes to burn. The princess knew that she needed rest before she again used the device for scrying, but she felt no desire to sleep.
In fact, her memory had served her well: She found the passage, in Khelben Arunsun's
Deirdre read about a creature from the Lower Planes, a six-legged menace called Gorathil. That horror had menaced an entire nation of halflings. The monster was the size of an ox, and it scuttled about with a speedy, crablike gait. Arunsun spent much time describing in detail the horrid claws of the monster, which were used to rend the halfling prey alive so that Gorathil's tooth-studded maw could devour the pieces.
Skipping over these details quickly, Deirdre pressed ahead to the end of the section, the equally involved account of the means by which the creature was vanquished. She wondered if perhaps the description in the book was relevant to the conflict now raging in Synnoria.
To Princess Deirdre, the problem was an interesting tactical study on the use of power. The fact that her sister and mother personally fought the monster in Synnoria meant little to her, save that she would earn their respect, perhaps even their fear, if she were able to best this thing.
Carefully, deliberately, she turned away from the mirror and continued to read.
Alicia scrambled through splintered wreckage, all that remained of a once-magnificent row of proud aspens that had lined the avenue beside the Palace of Ages. The Elf-Eater was somewhere ahead of her, invisible in the smoke that drifted across the park-like expanse that had once been the great plaza of Chrysalis. Now it looked like the ground where an epic battle had been lost.
The tree creature of her staff strided along beside her. The great being had used its strength to hold and delay the Elf-Eater but, like the earth elemental, had been unable to inflict serious injury to the beast. Now the changestaff stepped stiffly forward, pausing occasionally to bend forward until its upper half extended nearly parallel to the ground. Alicia wondered what it was doing, but finally she realized that it peered thus to inspect the blind spots around buildings and hedges. She found the uncanny alertness of the beast somewhat reassuring.
Mostly Alicia's mind tried to remain numb, inured by battle to a multitude of disasters. But too often she found herself looking through the smoke and wreckage for Pawldo, and then remembering, with a burning stab of pain, that she would never see him again. Then her thoughts would turn to her father, growing into a tornado of despair and fright.
Another crackling inferno flamed before her, driving her thoughts back to the present. The monster had smashed many houses, and often a cookfire or lantern inside ignited the wreckage. The fine timber blazed like a great bonfire, and the princess crossed to the far side of the street as she passed the ruined dwelling.
For hours, she and her companions and a handful of Llewyrr who had rallied to their city's defense had harassed the Elf-Eater in a great circle. The only thing they had been able to accomplish, at the cost of several elven lives, had been the distraction of the monster, for it had not yet moved in to ravage the palace.
Yet how long could they maintain this ultimately defeatist strategy? Alicia wondered. They had to find some way to damage the beast, to somehow slay it, or at the very least force it away from the otherwise defenseless city.
Keane had expended every spell in his repertoire, and though several had seemed to anger the monster, none had inflicted any noticeable damage. Her mother's wall of fire spell had sent the Elf-Eater plunging away in apparent panic, the first, and only, real setback that any of them had delivered to the dreaded slayer.
But none of it held even the faint hope of eventual victory-and so immense was the monster's apparent power that Alicia had begun to despair of ever finding the hope, let alone the reality, of the Elf-Eater's defeat.
Brigit's voice came to Alicia from somewhere ahead along the dust-shrouded boulevard. 'The Elf-Eater moves on the Argen-Tellirynd!'
Desperately weary, Alicia raised her sword and stumbled forward. A shape emerged from the murk to her left, and she smiled weakly at Hanrald as the knight fell in at her side.
'This thing is tougher than I thought,' admitted the armored warrior grimly. Nevertheless the Earl of Fairheight tightened his grip on the pommel of his great two-handed sword and marched steadily up the street.
Brigit joined them next. Her smooth face was bruised, her lips puffed and swollen. Her silver breastplate remained smooth, but concealed beneath soot, mud-and blood. She brushed a hand across her eyes, and Alicia noticed that she had lost a gauntlet somewhere.
Colleen, the scout who had fought beside Brigit all day, approached out of the smoke, her expression stricken.
'I found Myra's horse,' she said numbly. 'Others, too-but the riders were …'
'That's enough,' replied the captain, closing her eyes in momentary pain. She shook her head. How many lives would end on this day?
'Wait-we go together!' Brandon lurched from another smoky ruin, the northman's axe clutched firmly in his two hands. Others joined them from the places where they had scattered when the Elf-Eater had rumbled through. Robyn emerged from a clump of trees. The High Queen's face was smudged with smoke, but her eyes smoldered with the flame of anger. There was Keane, limping slightly. He pushed himself erect as the others came into view, joining their advance with scarcely a falter in his step.
'Argen-Tellirynd. . the palace,' Brigit said, her tone dull. 'It has stood inviolate for more than three thousand years.' She shook her head, as if trying to dispel an enchantment of disbelief. Ahead of them, they saw the Elf- Eater, crouching motionless between a pair of blazing houses, greedily devouring the numerous limp shapes scattered on the ground around it.
Abruptly the thing rose. If it noticed the approach of the companions, it gave no sign. Instead, it rolled forward in its deceptively awkward gait until it once again stood in the middle of the street, less than a hundred paces from Alicia.
Then it started to move, rumbling away from them toward the gleaming facets of Argen-Tellirynd.
'Can you distract it somehow?' Brigit cried to Keane, her tone desperate. 'Get it to come this way-anywhere but the palace!'
'When will it have enough?' groaned Keane, weariness making his voice strident. He raised a hand and barked a magical command.
Sparks hissed and crackled in the air, along with the pungent scent of a nearby lightning strike. Three balls of force, hissing and sputtering, trailing flashes and sparks in the air, hurtled into the Elf-Eater's carapace. Each
