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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 she looked across the peaceful lake toward the fields and forest beyond. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed, the idea that some horrific beast was out there seemed unthinkable.

Nevertheless, minutes later the small company of permanent-duty guards, silver speartips gleaming in the sun, followed Myra's orders and filed out the gates and over one of the long causeways connecting the island city to the shore.

Here the elven warriors deployed in a three-rank line of pikes, blocking the most direct route into Chrysalis.

Myra watched them go, telling herself that they were just a precaution. Nothing seemed unusual about the forest as she looked to the west, but the hysteria of the trout farm workers dispelled any sense of security she might have felt. And still she wondered: Where was Brigit? The captain of the sister knights held overall command of Synnoria's troops; Myra was a mere substitute, and she longed for the older elf's guidance.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Synnoria mobilized for their own defense. The young and the old, the pregnant and the infirm Llewyrr, all fled from the far side of the city in an orderly column. Myra would have liked to send them toward the Fey-Alamtine and, if necessary, the ultimate sanctuary of Evermeet. However, the monster's approach precluded that course. Indeed, it was perhaps fortunate that she had no way of knowing that the Synnorian Gate lay in a heap of crumbled rock, shattered by the beast's violent arrival.

Now these refugees would take shelter in the wooded valleys opposite the monster's reported avenue of approach. The adults, meanwhile, gathered any weapons that they could find and began to assemble in the City's park-like grand plaza.

The warriors of the Thy-Tach tribe made haste to join in the defense force, offering nearly four dozen powerfully muscled spearmen. These trotted swiftly along the causeway behind the pikes, ready to form a backup of that formation.

Then, as Myra stared at the bright woods, she sensed that something was horribly wrong. Treetops shivered and fell away one after the other in a clearly defined path-a path that led straight toward the elven city! Myra thought of a field of tall grass where a small dog bounds through, unseen, except these were great trees, many of them centuries old. Whatever crushed them aside possessed unspeakable strength.

Finally the Elf-Eater came into sight on the wooded shore, a looming form pressing the lush pines to either side in a waste of splinters and great, muddy footprints. It rumbled forward in its awkward gait, appearing