Immediately, a flight of Kaan dragons flew to and through the gateway, sparking a desperate reaction in the Skar. The entire Brood broke off their attack, sweeping down towards the beacon that was the active gate through which their enemy had flown.

More than a dozen had cleared the gate before the Kaan set up a defensive mesh around it that drove off the remaining Skar. It was a lesson they were never to forget. Neither was the first brief exchange between Sha-Kaan and Septern one the former would misplace in his old but razor-sharp mind.

‘What’s happening?’ Septern had asked of no one, plainly not expecting a reply from his unexpected guardian, his bewilderment plain in his tone, on his face and in the set of his body.

‘The Kaan fly to destroy the melde-dimension of the Skar. Then we will win the battle for Keol.’ Again, much as with Hirad Coldheart, Septern’s legs had given way in his surprise at the source of the answer to his question. He, too, had recovered quickly.

‘I don’t understand,’ he had said.

‘The gateway through which you travelled leads to the dimension that supports the Brood Skar; we can feel its signatures. We will destroy its critical fabrics and break that support. Then we will win the battle for Keol.’

Rage had suffused Septern’s face.

‘But they’re harmless Avians. You can’t . . . murderers!’ And he’d run from the startled Sha-Kaan, heading back to the gateway.

‘You can’t stop us. It is the way.’ But he had not listened. And he hadn’t stopped them. And he had returned. And Sha-Kaan had been waiting.

Sha-Kaan cut short his memory, arcing high to signal to the gate guard by dive and call his intended destination. Turning a full somersault, he gave the brackish low growl that signalled Wingspread and commenced a steep dive towards a particularly dense area of rainforest canopy.

Still, all these long rotations past, almost four hundred Balaian years, he enjoyed the thrill of the dive to the Kaan Broodland. There was no need to dive so fast but then there would be no excitement.

Sha-Kaan pirouetted in the air, barrelling towards the impenetrable green. A single lazy flick of his wings set his position exactly right before he swept them right back to ease his passage and he burst through the canopy at the appointed place and the valley was open before him.

Filled with mist that gently reflected the multiple spears of green-tinged pale light penetrating thin holes in the canopy above, the Kaan Broodland stretched as far as Vestare eyes could see in either direction. The rainforest canopy provided shelter and nurtured a wonderfully soft, warm atmosphere that soothed scales and softened the sounds of the lands and weather outside, leaving the Broodland serene. Sha-Kaan called, a gentle sound of peace and the Brood-at-spawn, four, perhaps five of them, called back, hidden beneath the mists.

Peace. The sounds of falling water, gently waving branches and the echoes of Broodcall calmed his mind. He spread his wings, braking in the air; the trees which scaled the valley’s sheer sides hundreds of feet and leaned to create the shield over his head were shadowy and black, the mists below pale and shifting in the spears of light.

He rolled once, letting the humid warmth caress his tired body before heading down, the steady beat of his great wings creating vortices in the mist, his head, neck outstretched, seeking home. In a dozen beats, the mists cleared and the sight below him gladdened his heart and brought tranquillity to his hard-worked mind.

Sha-Kaan’s Broodland was dominated by the wide, slow-moving River Tere. The river cascaded down a mighty waterfall at the northern end of the valley, broadening to its sluggish width as it coursed the floor, fed by other falls along its length until it tumbled from the southern cleft into an underground course. The sides of the valley where the trees grew were also home to the birds which fed on and seeded the Flamegrass which grew on vast areas of the Broodland. Great stone slabs punctured the grass and, where the soil was thinnest, the Vestare of the Broodland made their homes from wood and thatch.

Sha-Kaan flew the length of the valley, his calls echoed by the Brood-at-spawn, who didn’t venture from their Birthing Chouls, plain, flat, low structures designed to create the exact climate in which young Kaan could be born and nurtured until fledged. Fires burned below great steaming vats of water within each of the Birthing Chouls, keeping them hot and the condensation running freely down the walls to feed the damp of the ground, beneath which more water was channelled and in which the nests were made.

Sha-Kaan turned about, a lazy, graceful action, spread his wings, angled down to slow him for landing, and shuddered the rock under his feet as he touched ground, bringing his servants running to him.

‘I am uninjured,’ he said. ‘Leave me, I would look at your labours.’ And he looked and he saw that everything was exactly as he wanted. He sighed his happiness. Wingspread. Home.

Wingspread was a magnificent structure, its polished white stone arc dominating the valley, pushing up more than one hundred and fifty feet toward the mists above. Its low entrance halls led to the main dome where he rested and held audience. The dome itself was a perfect hemisphere which had taken four attempts to achieve to his satisfaction. It sat atop octagonal walls, each side carved with his face such that it gazed in all directions, warding evil from the Broodland.

Either side of the dome rose towers, shining columns that finished in smoking spires with balconies at three heights. Beneath each one, fires burned hot beneath water vats. Like the spawning Kaan, he desired moist heat when away from the Choul and his kin. It eased his scales, soothed his wings and calmed his eyes.

But what gave Wingspread its name was the staggering carving that stretched behind and on either side of the dome, reaching high and touching the mists almost three hundred feet above. In every detail, every vein, bone, flaw, nick and scratch, Sha-Kaan’s wings were depicted sweeping up together, their tips touching just out of sight. It was a monument appropriate to his rule of the Brood.

The Great Kaan walked slowly forwards, neck held in the formal ‘s’, wings balancing his glittering gold body in its ponderous upright movement.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Excellent.’ He closed his eyes, aligned himself carefully and shifted inside the dome. The brief dimensional movement, only possible when the body was still, was a necessity in a building whose doors were not designed to admit the bulk of a dragon, but merely his servants and aides.

Inside, the close heat worked instant relaxation. He rested his body, stretched his neck across the damp floor and chewed absently at the bales of Flamegrass stacked all around the walls before snatching a goat from its tether. He took a moment of quiet contemplation, eyes roving the inside of the dome, flickering over the murals painted there of a land long gone. A land before the dragons fought for mastery. Now there were precious few pockets of original beauty left. Keol had been one and, as he considered that more work was needed on the murals, his mind drifted back to Septern and the knowledge that their meeting that fateful day long ago was linked inexorably to the plight of Balaia today and the gateway in the sky above Teras.

‘Our options are seriously limited,’ said Kard. ‘I know that’s an obvious thing to say but you need to know exactly where we stand.’

Kerela had summoned the entire Julatsan Council to listen to Kard. They were sat around the High Table in the Tower’s Council Chambers, a series of rooms which ran around the outside of the Tower, ringing the Heart.