Behind him, the green-gold dome of Aryndeneth rose two hundred feet into the air, its apex on a level with the highest boughs of the canopy. The temple had stood for over five thousand years, its stone partially hidden beneath a tapestry of thick mosses, ivies and liana. It was periodically cleared but the voracious forest growth didn’t lose its grip for long.
But whether cleared or not, the temple was barely visible more than fifty yards away.
It hadn’t always been like this. In the centuries after its building, Aryndeneth had been a place of pilgrimage, revered by the elves as the centre of their faith. The Earth Home. A grand stone apron with a carved path between the massive slabs had greeted travellers, and the rainforest trail had been carefully cleared and maintained for a hundred miles north.
Now the trail was long gone, and though a portion of the apron and its path was still visible beneath the weeds and creepers the rainforest’s march was relentless, and Rebraal and his people fought a constant battle against it.
Rebraal looked to his right across the great iron-bound wooden doors of the temple. Mercuun had sensed it too. His eyes were scanning the dark, his ears pricked gauging the forest mood. Further out, on the tree platforms, Skiriin, Rourke and Flynd’aar had bows ready. It was all the confirmation Rebraal needed.
He cocked an ear and listened hard, trying to gain a sense of the potential threat. The noise of the forest surrounded him, the heat stifling even in the hours before dawn. A dozen species of birds called mating or warning, monkeys screeched and greeted, their progress through the canopy marked by the rustle and crack of branches. Myriad insects buzzed, vibrated and rasped and the growl of a wildcat punctuated the pre-dawn cacophony.
In every way but one, it was as every other night Rebraal could remember. This night though, the accent of the warnings was different. There was a change in the atmosphere and every creature in the forest felt it. Strangers. Close and dead ahead.
The clicking of a brown tree frog filtered down from one of the platforms. Rebraal looked up. Rourke signalled eight strangers approaching in single file; warriors and mages hacking a path to Aryndeneth. They were not pilgrims. No pilgrims were due until after the rainy season and that was fifty days away. Rebraal nodded, put fingers to his eyes and drew another across his throat. Whoever they were, they could not be allowed to escape with word of the location.
He snapped his fingers twice and heard Erin’heth and Sheth’erei move up on his left. SpellShields were deployed and he went forward, sensing Mercuun matching his pace. The two warriors made no sound, the mages behind them moving only to keep them within the shields. Glancing at the platforms suspended thirty feet into the trees bordering the apron, Rebraal saw the trio of archers tracking targets. From the angle of the bows, they were close, perhaps fifty yards away, no more. He stopped, hand up.
The blundering of the strangers was easily audible now and the forest around them was quietening. He waved behind him with his left arm, pointing up to send Erin’heth ahead to shield the platform. He drew his slender, quick blade, holding it in his right hand. With his left, he reached across and unclasped the pouch of jaqrui throwing crescents on his belt.
Now he paced forward again, acute eyes narrowing, seeing movement in the darkness ahead. The strangers were carrying no light but that wouldn’t hide them. He could hear the regular hack of blades on vegetation, the cracking of twigs underfoot and the odd snatch of speech. No doubt they had been told that noise would deter predators in the rainforest. And so it was but with one particularly deadly exception.
The strangers would never set eyes on the temple. Rebraal called the peculiar wail of the tawny buzzard and began to run, footsteps ghosting over the edge of the apron and on into the forest.
Arrows whipped away from the platforms. Strangled cries came from the strangers and he heard the sound of bodies hitting the forest floor. Another volley thrummed into the dark. Orders and shouts snapped out and the surviving strangers scattered. Rebraal gripped a jaqrui and ducked low as he entered the thick growth, flicking it out backhand when he saw the face of a crouching warrior peering over a fallen log. Shaped like a