Finally the prince eased out of her embrace. "It is past time. I must go."

Maura nodded. She walked with him to the forest's edge. She watched as he descended the steep path to the harbor, and kept watching until Lamruil's ship was little more than a golden dot on the far horizon. She watched with eyes misted with grief born not only of loss, but understanding.

For the first time, she realized the truth of her love. Lamruil was meant to be a king-it was a role he was growing into, though in ways that few of Evermeet's elves might recognize. The day would come when he would be ready. And on that day, she would lose him to Evermeet.

"Long live Queen Amlaruil," she whispered with a fervor that had nothing to do with her genuine respect for Evermeet's monarch.

More than two years passed before Lamruil returned to the island. To the elves, this was no great time, but every day, every moment of it weighed heavily upon Maura. She had a task to do. She and Lamruil were one in their purpose, and she did her part with a determination that bemused her elven instructors. She threw herself into sword practice with a fervor that rivaled that of the most dedicated bladesinger. She did so, not only because she was a fighter at heart and because she loved the dance of battle, but because she, unlike the elves, fully expected a war to come.

And so she trained for it, watched for it, lived for it. Even so, when it came, she was unprepared.

They were all unprepared, the proud elves of Evermeet. The threat came from the place they least expected, from an enemy that all assumed was too far removed for concern. From Below they came-the unthinkable. The drow.

The attack came on the northernmost shore of the island. Throughout the long autumn night, the tunnels below the ancient ruins of Craulnober Keep echoed with the clash of weapons and the faint, instinctive cries that even the bravest of warriors could not hold back when a blade sank home. But the sounds had faded into grim silence, sure proof that the first battle was nearly over.

Was nearly lost.

Reinforcements came from Ruith's Lightspear Keep and from the lonely strongholds of the Eagle Hills. Maura came with them, to stand beside the elves who had raised and trained her.

The defenders struggled to regain the ancient castle from the dark-elven invaders that poured forth like seething, deadly lava from the depths of the stone. The approach of dawn brought a turn in the tide of battle, for as the drow began to fall back in anticipation of the coming light, the elves managed to breach the ancient curtain wall of the keep. With renewed ferocity, the elves took the battle to the dark elves who held the castle. Many dark bodies lay amid the fallen of Evermeet. With the coming of dawn, the surviving drow withdrew to the tunnels from whence they had come.

Too soon, the proud elves counted their victory. Following the command of Shonassir Durothil, they pursued. Nearly all the elves abandoned their positions on the cliffs and hills beyond the castle and came into the abandoned keep, determined to pursue and destroy the invaders.

No sooner had they entered the walls, however, than the doors swung shut behind them and sealed so completely that gates and walls seemed to have been melted into a single, unbroken expanse of stone.

A cloud of darkness settled over the castle, shrouding the elven fighters in an impenetrable mist and a chilling aura of pure evil.

Into this darkness the drow returned, silent and invisible, armed with terrible weapons and confusing magic. Here and there pinpricks of red light darted about like malevolent will’o'wisps. Those elves who took these to be the drow's heat-sensitive eyes found, in giving chase, that they followed an illusion. Their reward was invariably an invisible dagger in the spine, and a faint burst of mocking laughter-music as beautiful and terrible as the faerie bells of the Unseelie courts.

The elves fought on amid the darkness and despair. They fought bravely and well, but they died all the same.

A few of the warriors managed to find their way into the tunnels. These pursued the drow back toward the island of Tilrith, through tunnels that hundreds of years of dark elven work and magic had reopened.

And in the darkness they died, for in the tunnels beyond the keep lurked the only two creatures that were perhaps even more feared than the drow. One of these, a beautiful dark elven female, shrieked with elation each time one of Corellon Larethian's children perished.

Lloth had come at last to Evermeet. Though magic barred her from setting foot upon the island itself, the tunnels below were hers to command.

No such strictures were placed upon the creature with her, a terrible thing that resembled nothing so much as a gigantic, three-legged cockroach. The monster surged toward the keep. Its probing snout swept along the tunnel walls, and the ironhard maw churned busily as the creature chiseled through the stone to make way for its bulk. Nearly as large as a dragon and covered with impenetrable armor, the monster was one that was all too familiar to many of Evermeet's elves.

Malar's creature, the Ityak-Ortheel, had followed Lloth from her home on the Abyss. Finally, the Beastlord and the Queen of Spiders had found a way to unite their strengths in a strike against Evermeet. The dreaded elf-eater needed a gate from the Abyss and Lloth had been able to provide one.

The elf-eater surged upward, exploding from the stone floor of the keep. Scores of tentacles probed the air, testing for the airborne taste of nearby prey. The creature was relentless, devouring both living and dead elves until the keep was silent and empty. With the speed of a galloping horse, the creature plunged into the ancient wall. The stone shattered, sending a cloud of dust and rubble hurtling out of the blackness that encircled the castle and threatened to engulf all of Evermeet.

One warrior survived-the only one whose blood was not sufficiently elven to call to the elf-eater. Alone, Maura watched in despair as the elf-eater turned away from the keep, heading south with a linear intensity that even a crow's flight could not match. Maura could guess all too well its destination, and its intent.

The monster was heading for Corellon's grave, the nearest elven settlement-not coincidentally, one of the seats of Evermeet's power. Many of the most powerful clerics came together to study and pray, to cast clerical magic to aid the People here and now, and to contemplate the wonders that awaited them in the realms of Arvandor. There, amid the temples of Corellon's Grove, the elf-eater would once again feed.

This was horror enough, but one more thought added the extra measure of urgency needed to tear Maura from her exhaustion and despair: The Princess Ilyrana, a priestess of the goddess Angharradh, made her home in the Grove.

A shrilling cry burst from Maura's lips, a shriek that to human ears would have been indistinguishable from an eagle's call. Maura, who had been raised among the Eagle Hills, knew of the giant birds and had heard the elves call them many times. Never had she summoned them, never had she ridden one. She wasn't certain she could succeed at either. It would not be the first time, however, that an untried warrior had ridden such a steed into battle.

She had not long to wait. An enormous bird dropped from the sky with unnerving silence, coming to rest on a pile of rubble that the elf-eater had left behind when it crashed through the keep. The eagle was as large as a war-horse, and beautiful. The slanting rays of the rising sun turned its feathers to gold. It was also fearsome, with a hooked beak larger than Maura's head, and talons the size of the dagger she carried.

The bird cocked its head in inquisition. "Who you? What want?" it demanded in a shrill voice.