there were weapons for the Al-Arynaar. Rebraal determined to use them if he could.
From the rise in temperature, Rebraal guessed he’d travelled two hours before he smelled woodsmoke. He’d heard nothing alien and the smell wasn’t strong, just faint tendrils on the sluggish breeze. Even so, he slowed to listen harder. He had no clear idea what he faced and assuming the ineptitude of the vanguard would be repeated by those in the camp was dangerous.
He heard nothing out of place. The rainforest was awake. Birds screeched, boughs creaked as monkeys and lizards traversed overhead, the undergrowth was alive with rodent, arachnid, insect and reptile. The air buzzed and hummed. All was as it should be bar the acrid taint of char on the wind. He trotted on, footfalls silent on the path, ears straining for the sounds he knew would come.
It was another two hours before he heard them: voices filtering through the dense vegetation, the snap of a branch as it burned and the lazy flap of tent canvas. He pitied anyone who chose to sleep on the ground. Most of what crawled or slithered was poisonous to a greater or lesser degree. Too bad.
For the last three hundred yards, he left the path but kept close enough to study it. The strangers had posted two guards but they were scared men, eyes shifting towards every sound, real or imagined. Rebraal watched them for a time. From a distance of five yards they had no idea he was even there. He would have laughed but he didn’t want to scare them into running. Instead, he left them scratching at their legs and swatting uselessly at the insects buzzing around their heads and moved on.
Closer to the camp, he slowed still further, frowning. The sound of voices, gruff and unhappy, was louder than he had anticipated, and the light from ahead brighter, as if they’d found or enlarged a clearing. The smell of woodsmoke was stronger now and he could see its wisps edging through the shade under the canopy. The forest was quieter here, the presence of strangers scaring the wildlife and the smoke dampening the rampant enthusiasm of the insect swarms.
He edged through a waist-high sea of huge-leafed fronds, thick stalks tacky with sap, keeping crouched as he came, eyes fixed on the light ahead. Pushing aside a thatch of ivy hanging from the branches of a balsa tree, he leaned against its trunk and peered around it into the camp.
The breath caught in his throat. This wasn’t a mere raiding party, it was more like an organised invasion. Eyes scanning the man-made clearing of something like three hundred feet a side, he counted them as they moved in and out of the cover of the tentage pitched in orderly form around a dozen campfires.
Warriors, mages and bowmen, there had to be one hundred and fifty of them. Maybe more.
Rebraal shrank back into the comforting embrace of the forest, his heart thrashing in his chest so loud he thought it might give him away, his mind churning with questions, options and nightmares. In no more than a day, these men would question the whereabouts of the dead trail-finders. Then they would come. Slowly maybe, but in force.
At Aryndeneth Rebraal had ten Al-Arynaar, and of them Meru was gone to spread the alarm. Too late. Whatever was to come, those at the temple would have to face it and beat it alone.
Before he inched forward to commit everything he could to memory, Rebraal offered a fervent prayer to Yniss for a miracle. Because sure as baking sun followed the rains, they were going to need one.
Erienne watched with detached disinterest the dragon swoop in to land on the upper slopes of the mountain, where the other Kaan sat with Hirad acting like masters of all they surveyed. They could have it. It was a traitor’s kingdom.
All the while she hummed Lyanna’s favourite song, her hands caressing the earth beneath which her daughter lay. She turned back. The bed was looking beautiful today, alive with vibrant reds and yellows, deep purples and lush greens. Lyanna was giving her energy to the earth; her inextinguishable life-force would bless this place for ever.
Erienne sat back on her haunches and looked left and right along the terraces cut into the gentle slope that led up to the mountain peak. She took in the arches, statues, pillars, grottoes, intricate rock gardens and perfectly formed trees. She opened her mind to the deep and