Upon being questioned by Malcolm, the Mayor said the black-robed creatures never seemed to appear in town before ten o'clock.

Since no one knew what the power of these creatures was, how many there were - in short, anything at all about them - we needed to have a meeting with all the men of the town and nearby country we could get together in an hour, as well as the sailors, to discuss the danger. Everyone was to be warned that no one was to leave their houses alone after nine in the morning and no children were to be allowed out at all until the danger was past.

At the meeting there was the usual range of reactions from total disbelief to those who were ready to immediately rush out with pitchforks and firebrands. Malcolm pointed out to the firebrands that we knew nothing about these creatures yet; their strength, their communications, their intelligence, how dangerous they are near and at a distance, and whether they are subject to magic. To the unbelievers, he said that proof would be coming very soon.

"What we need first," said Malcolm, "is a cage we can trap one of these bugs in - two of them that is - and some ideas of how to get them in it. Some of you folks are far more familiar that we are with how to do something like this that we are. We can place a spell on the cage that will block all known communication and hope it will cover any calls for help or warnings to the main hive. Of course We'll also lay any other spells we can think of to make it safer."

"The creatures seem, for the most part," said the Mayor, "to have very unchanging habits. That's one of the things that made us nervous about them - that and their silence. We can set a trap where one of them always stands at a particular time; they seem to stand at the same places for exactly the same time every day. We have to hurry to get everything done before they appear at about ten o'clock."

With that, different groups were formed and got busy with preparing the trap, the method and the place to set it. One man had a cage that could be modified to catch and hold the creatures and Malcolm and Tintinel went off with a group to make the modifications and set the spells. Another group went to locate the best place to set it.

Aril, Lira, Olu and I were left at loose ends so we decided to make contact with some of the tree spirits in town. We thought that it would be safe; no one had been threatened inside the town by any of the creatures and only two of us at a time would pop into a tree - the other two would stand guard.

We walked back to the ship first thinking it would be better to become invisible and not wanting to do it in the middle of the street. Near the docks we saw a small park with trees that had benches built around them; that would be ideal. "Wouldn't it be better," asked Lira, "if we stayed visible and just pretended the ones in the tree were napping if someone comes along?"

The rest of us agreed and we all went and sat down around the largest tree. Aril and I were the first to pop into the tree. We were immediately with the tree spirit at the top of the tree with the town spread out below and could see a group of men a few blocks away carrying a cage and another group toward whom they were moving doing things we couldn't quite make out.

"Hi!" said the tree spirit, "I presume you are some of those the Great Tree has contacted us about. Welcome."

"Yes," I said, "I'm Justin and this is Aril. We're on our way to find the Great Tree. Lira and Olu are with us but they'll visit you after we leave. I would be grateful if you would find out if there's news for us from the Great Tree."

After a moment the tree spirit told us, "There are greetings from many, including the Great Tree herself, who wishes you a speedy and safe arrival at her Island."

Lemuel had checked in and said the North Dwolim had accepted that the three signs were being fulfilled and that they needed to retranslate the whole prophesy in keeping with what was happening and reveal it to the rest of the world. The Gnomes and Dwarves were continuing to train the trustiest of their numbers in tree popping and were very carefully exploring the vast caves and underground sea we had found while searching for Aril.

They had made a major discovery that was of immense help. They had found a room at the lower levels that was filled with very strange things like desks and many clock-like thing covering the walls and many levers made of many kinds of metal and glass. Most of the things had little glass jewels on their surfaces. A few of these were lighted with different colors, mostly red and yellow. The gnomes and dwarves couldn't understand at all what all this was for so they very carefully were moving the levers, some large and some tiny. Most did nothing but some caused new lights to appear or the hands of the clock-like things to move.

As they did this one at a time, suddenly the whole room was filled with bright light that came from globes suspended from the ceiling. They left the last lever they had moved the way it was and sent a messenger to tell Quant. He shouted back through the door that the corridor beyond was lighted too and then was on his way.

After a time Quant came to them and told them that almost all the caves were now lighted. They set a guard on the desk-like thing holding the lever that caused the light and were now trying all the other levers again. Many more of the glass jewels were now lit and many of the hands on the clock-like things were moving slightly. Many of the rooms were still dark, but very often they had little levers on the walls that brought light when they were moved.

Mrs. Penny, Mora and the Tirkenez family and Buden sent their good wishes, but there was nothing new to report from them.

We talked with the tree spirit for a while and then gave it a name. All the names were being remembered by the Great Tree so we wouldn't have to keep track of all of them ourselves.

We exchanged with Lira and Olu and after a few minutes they came out again and we went toward the place the bugs were to be captured. Before we got there there was a guard who told us where Malcolm and Tintinel were.

They were in a building across the street from the place they were attempting to trap the bugs with several of the townsmen including the Mayor. There didn't seem to be anything to show that there was a trap. "We've made the trap invisible," said Malcolm, "and we've set all the spells we know to stop communication from inside the cage to the outside; hopefully at least one of them will work so the other bugs wont know what happened. According to the men of the village the creatures should get here soon. Thankfully they seem to have fixed habits so we just left the cage door open on the side they come from and it will trip when they enter. Ah, here they came now."

Now that we knew what was under the robes we could see how strangely it moved, not like a man walking at all; more like someone being drawn along on a wheeled cart, kind of floating. Everyone held their breath as it moved along the street. Tintinel whispered, "It's going in..."

Suddenly we heard a loud bang and the creature partially collapsed. Malcolm said some words and the cage became visible surrounding the black figure. We all went out into the street and other came out of other buildings as well. Malcolm gingerly reached into the cage and whipped the robe out. There was a huge insect-like creature with a wooden frame on its back and a second identical creature on the frame. The top one was trying to get out of the top of the frame and the bottom one was trying to get out from under the frame. They didn't seem to have any other purposeful activity.

"They don't seem to be intelligent enough to be much of a threat." the Mayor said, "How can they have built these frames and pretended to be men?"

"I think it must be the non-communication spells." said Malcolm, "Perhaps they are being guided by some more intelligent being, or maybe they are more intelligent when they're in contact with larger numbers of themselves."

"Whatever the answer is," the Mayor said, "we certainly must purge our island. We can't have innocent people being sucked dry or providing food for the maggots of these wretched bugs!

"Absolutely!" replied Malcolm, "but we don't yet know what these creatures are capable of. Obviously they're not much of a threat alone and they must not be overly dangerous even as a group to large numbers of men or they wouldn't disguise themselves, they'd just do whatever they wanted. But we don't know what they can do in large numbers

We don't want to loose even one more person to them so we'll continue to be very careful.

Stories about dragons, centaurs, and wizards, enhanced with electronic media, for fantasy lovers; new postings monthly by Antelope E-Books.

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