When she eventually rose, she didn't partake of the bread and cheese that had been delivered to her anteroom. Instead, she turned to the mirror.
Quickly an image came into focus. It was a picture of Synnoria, the valley that was no longer pastoral. Stark lines of black earth, splintered trees, and muddy wreckage marred the green fields, and Deirdre quickly observed the image of Ityak-Ortheel, the Elf-Eater. The beast, rolling smoothly, rapidly forward on its three legs, moved resolutely down the valley.
For the moment, Deirdre could see no sign of her mother or sister, nor of their companions. But then a small group of riders thundered into sight, and when Keane's lightning bolt exploded against the monster, she knew beyond a doubt that she had found the party of Ffolk.
Deirdre leaned closer to get a better look at the tiny figures in the mirror. A tiny smile creased her mouth. She didn't know why, but she found the spectacle in the looking glass strangely amusing.
"Who's hurt?" asked the queen, her voice a harsh note of reality amid the dreamlike silence that followed the battle.
No one replied, but the companions all held their weapons ready, staring after the diminishing form of the monster as it moved down the valley.
"Pawldo. ." Alicia spoke her friend's name as if in a daze. "We have to avenge him!"
Robyn laid a hand upon her daughter's shoulder, but her look followed the creature that had slain their friend. The princess gazed after the beast as well, but her mind recalled only the smiling halfling who had brought her treats since she was a little girl. He can't be dead! She tried to lie to herself, but her recent memories stubbornly reminded her of the truth.
Then, as if for the first time, the High Queen turned to look at the two disheveled Llewyrr, the pair whose plight had drawn them into the attack in the first place.
"Brigit?" she asked tentatively.
"Robyn-or is it 'Your Majesty'?" replied the elf, shock written across her features.
"Yes," said the human woman, adding a wry laugh. "Though not so unchanged by time as yourself."
"You saved our lives …" the elfwoman realized with dawning amazement, quickly turning to suspicion. "And yet by all rights you should not even be here! How did you pass our border? What brings you here at all?"
"Those reasons can wait until later," said the High Queen in a tone as firm as Brigit's. She indicated the tracks of the monster, scoured in the black dirt. "We have a more pressing problem now!"
"The Llewyrr have a problem. This is an invasion of Synnoria, not Corwell," the sister knight replied stiffly. "Your aid is appreciated. As I indicated, your presence saved our lives."
"Our actions saved your lives!" Alicia snapped, indignant at the elfwoman's arrogance. She would have spoken further except that her mother raised a hand.
"This monster is a horror that menaces all Gwynneth," Robyn declared. "And therefore, it is my problem. I am the monarch of the lands beyond your valley! Whether it ravages all Synnoria while we stand here in discussion, or whether we work together to stop it is up to you."
The humans in the party stood silent. Even the elves seemed taken aback. Brigit's eyes flashed, but she 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.