‘Just one dragon,’ The Unknown had said as they watched with hypnotic stillness the countless miles of smoke and flame. ‘Just one.’ His words had speeded their ascent.

Now here they stood, The Raven, apart from the rest as befitted the Dragonene of the Great Kaan and those pledged to help him, and looked down for the first time on the Kaan homeland. The slope they had climbed had flattened into a pitted rock plateau which swept to a point jutting out over the homeland. As they stood at its edge, the rock beneath them formed an overhang, arcing down and out of sight the Gods knew how far below. And all around them was a different world.

Left and right below them, a carpet of shifting green lay covering a wide valley, the walls of which were just visible through the veil. Massive leaves waved gently, attached to huge boughs that sat darkly beneath the surface and Hirad could only imagine the size of the trunks from which they grew. Across the undulating surface, the sun’s orange light shot delightful rays of colour through pale strands of mist, and the stark backdrop of white peaked mountains tumbling down to dark flatlands completed the serene picture.

But that alone wasn’t the beauty Hirad saw. In the sky above the canopy, the Kaan wheeled and dived, lazy beats begetting long, graceful glides as they circled while those entering the trees from above swept their wings back and shot past, golden bodies sparkling in the orange glow as their bodies spun, dragging vortices of mist after them as they disappeared.

And they called to each other. Sounds of welcome, of farewell, of sadness, of love and of enduring devotion. To the Brood, to each other and to their home. The calls were brackish and guttural, or haunting hollow cries that echoed from the valley walls. They tugged at Hirad’s heart and senses, filling him with the warmth of belonging and the emptiness of the war that stole Kaan from the sky each day.

Hirad felt the strength falter in his legs and he crouched, one leg under him, his right hand on the ground as he rocked forwards, watching. He could have stayed there all day, such was the majesty of the Kaan and their homeland. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. It was Ilkar.

‘Can you believe it?’ asked Hirad, gesturing at the awesome view all around them, his eyes again on the Kaan and the trees and mist covering their valley, a warm moist breeze blowing in his face.

‘If I live to be five hundred, this will be my abiding memory as I die,’ said the elf, the magnitude of it all plain in his voice.

‘Never mind Balaia. They’re too busy grasping for themselves, most of them. This is what we’re really trying to save. And this is why we can’t fail.’ Hirad stood up, wiping damp eyes. To his left, Jatha gazed down on the homeland with an almost stupefied expression on his face.

‘Home,’ he said.

‘See what it means to them? He must have seen this a hundred times but just look at him.’

Ilkar nodded. ‘We all want this to work, Hirad, and your reason is probably more compelling than most but I think you need to be realistic about our chances.’

‘Tell me on the way down. I think Jatha is anxious to get there, as am I.’

Jatha led them to a stairway carved from the stone of the mountain on which they stood. Steep and moss-covered, it swept under the overhang, twisting and turning through cleft, behind waterfall and around the enormous boles of the trees whose leaves hemmed in more strands of mist, building clouds the further down they went.

Descending through the dancing, orange-striated cloud, the atmosphere closed in hot and damp, vision was impaired and the stairs became slick and wet, treacherous to the unsure foot. Ahead of The Raven, Jatha and his men scampered down with practised confidence, Jatha’s voice at odds with his movement as it periodically echoed ‘Careful!’ up through the mist.

But for the Balaians the way was far slower. Leaning into the rock wall, which ran with water or was covered with a thin film of slime, they kept away from the far edge which plummeted down through the mist to death on the valley floor.

Hirad, walking behind Ilkar, had decided not to ask any questions until they breached the mist but when they did, it was a long time before he could find any words. In a few paces, the mist had thinned and cleared beneath the leaf layer, giving them their first view of the Kaan homeland.

A vast flat space of rock, grass and river stretched under the mist which reflected a gentle, warm light on to the land below, giving the homeland a tranquil aspect, easy on the eye. The river which meandered through the centre of the valley was a sparkling blue and the sounds of water reached them across the still, humid air from falls which fed the river in a dozen places he could see. The grassland was a luxuriant deep green tipped with red and blue just like the plain and, given the connected squares of close-cropped and waist-high stalks, was clearly tended and harvested for some purpose.

The buildings scattered along the valley sides, some low, flat and half-buried, others dug deep into the rock of the valley itself, seemed purely functional. But one magnificent structure dominated the Broodland. With its polished white stone gleaming in the filtered sunlight, its dome and towers striking towards the sky yet dwarfed by the extraordinary sculpted wings whose tips all but touched the mist above, Wingspread was a simply staggering monument to Sha-Kaan. And his carved face looked out at his domain, eyes forever watching for danger. Nothing like it existed in Balaia and, for all their magic, nothing ever would. This was a construct born of consummate respect and veneration for a leader the Kaan and their Vestare honoured freely and with a fervour lost to the peoples of its kindred dimension.

All the Balaians had stopped to drink in the view. Glancing across at Denser, Hirad saw the awe on his face while Erienne’s held an enraptured smile that had as much to do with the atmosphere of peace and safety as the sights before her. For Hirad, it was like coming home and he closed his eyes and let the feelings of the Kaan wash over him, his limbs tingling, his mind suffused with the thoughts Sha-Kaan let drift through his mind.

‘Tell me we won’t let this be destroyed,’ he said eventually.

‘We’ll save it or die trying,’ said Ilkar. Hirad looked at Ilkar, seeing that the determination that had bound him to The Raven for ten years had not dimmed.

‘Well, I have no intention of dying,’ said Hirad. ‘Tell me about our chances.’ He motioned that they should follow after Jatha and his men who had continued to the base of the stairway and were wading through a square of grass, their walk becoming a run as they approached the river and a set of crossing stones.

Calls of welcome from human mouths echoed across the Broodland and from a dozen small stone-and-thatch dwellings set in a hamlet close to the river came more of the Vestare. Children squealed with delight, men and women came together in embraces, splashing through the shallows to welcome home those who had been gone from sanctuary so long.

Laughter floated across the air but with it the sounds of crying and sorrow as those whose men had not survived learned of their loss. The mood broke quickly and solemnity returned. All faces turned towards The Raven as they, Styliann and the Protectors strode towards the river, crossing the same stones Jatha had danced across so recently.

‘Raven, welcome,’ he said. ‘Hirad, home.’

‘Home,’ agreed Hirad. He pointed towards Wingspread. ‘Sha-Kaan? ’

Jatha shook his head. ‘Wait,’ he said. His face cracked into a smile. ‘Eat? Drink.’ He clapped his hands and some of the Vestare scampered away, disappearing into their houses. He sat on some close-cropped grass and motioned his guests to do the same. Fruit and strips of meat were brought out on platters by some, while others brought pitchers of water and juice and carved wooden cups out of which to drink. From somewhere nearby, music from a set of pipes drifted across the air.