Rebraal looked into his friend’s dark-skinned face, saw the brow above the angled oval eyes furrowed and his leaf-shaped, gently pointed ears pricking as he tried to come to terms with what had just happened.

‘Get Skiriin and take them away from the path they made, over to the clearing north. Keep anything useful, shred their clothes and leave the bodies. The forest will take care of them.’

‘Rebraal?’ There was an edge to Mercuun’s voice.

‘Yes, Meru?’

‘Who were they and how did they know where to find us?’ Rebraal ran a hand through his long black hair. ‘Two very good questions,’ he said. ‘They’re from Balaia certainly, but beyond that who can tell? I’m going to track back along their route in the morning, see if I can find anything. Meantime we have to keep vigilant.’

‘They won’t be the last, will they?’ said Mercuun.

‘No,’ said Rebraal. ‘If I had my guess I’d say they were picking the path here. They were travelling too light for anything else. There will be more to come, and they might not be far away. We may not have much time.’

Rebraal looked deep into Mercuun’s face and saw the worry that he felt himself. It was bad enough that these men from the northern continent had managed to gain information no man should. But they had also evaded those that fed disinformation and the TaiGethen who killed those who persisted. It was an immense rainforest but the outer circle and town dwellers of his kind had kept the uninvited from Aryndeneth for more than four hundred years.

He clicked his tongue, a decision made. ‘Meru, I want you to get the word around. Start at sunrise. We can’t wait for the relief. Every available Al-Arynaar must get here as quickly as they can. And the outer circles must press into the north. I want word as far north as Tolt-Anoor, west to Ysundeneth and east to Heri-Benaar. Take supplies for two days, start the message rolling and get back here.’

Mercuun nodded.

Rebraal walked back towards the temple and took in its camouflaged majesty, a sight of which he would never tire. He knelt on the apron and offered a prayer to Yniss, the God of harmony, to protect them all. When he was done, he leant his hands on his thighs and listened again to the forest.

It at least was resting easy once again.

Hirad Coldheart shifted his back where he leant against Sha-Kaan’s broad neck, feeling the scales chafing him through his wool shirt. He got a taste of the dragon’s strong sour oil and wood smell as he did so and was glad they sat in the open air. The Great Kaan’s enormous body, more than one hundred and twenty feet from snout to tail, was stretched out along a contour of the slope on which they rested, overlooking the tarnished idyll of Herendeneth.

The small island, no more than a mile and a half wide and two long, lay deep within the Ornouth Archipelago, which basked under the warm sun of the Southern Ocean off the north-eastern tip of Calaius, the Southern Continent. It was a perfect mix of lush green slopes, waving beech groves and spectacular rock faces surrounding a shallow mountain peak on which stood a great stone needle, monument to the long-dead of an ancient magic. But the perfection had been scarred for ever by battle and the death of innocence.

Sha-Kaan had positioned his head so that he could see both Hirad and down the slopes to the groves, graveyard terraces and gardens. Beyond them were the ruins of the once proud house of the Al-Drechar, now devastated by a magic that had threatened the entire Balaian dimension. His left eye swivelled to fix the barbarian warrior with an unblinking stare.

‘Are my scales an irritant to you?’ he rumbled.

‘Well they aren’t the most ideal cushion,’ said Hirad.

‘I’ll have someone rub them smooth for you. Just point out those which require attention.’

Hirad chuckled and turned to look into the Great Kaan’s startling blue eye which was set into a head almost as tall as he was.

‘Your sense of humour’s coming on, I see,’ he said. ‘Still a long way to go, though.’

Sha-Kaan’s slitted black pupil narrowed. ‘One roll and I could snap your frail body like a twig.’

Hirad felt the humour in his mind like tendrils of mist on the breeze. There was no doubt the dragon had mellowed during their enforced stay on Herendeneth. In times past, he might have made that comment with both sincerity and intent. Still, joke or not, it remained true.

‘Just being honest,’ said Hirad.

‘As am I.’

They fell silent. It had been a long time coming, getting on for six years, but Hirad felt he could now describe Sha-Kaan as a friend. He had likened his relationship to the dragon to an apprenticeship. Ever since he’d agreed to become the Great Kaan’s Dragonene, so giving the dragon a life-sustaining link to the Balaian dimension, he’d been the lesser partner in an unequal alliance. Although the benefits of direct contact and support from a dragon were obvious, throughout the time they’d known each other, the awesome creature, secure in his mastery and power, had felt he had nothing to prove to the human. Hirad had felt absolutely the reverse.

But the inequality had lessened during Sha-Kaan and his Brood brother Nos-Kaan’s long exile in Balaia. Locked in a foreign dimension by a violent realignment of dimensional space and his home lost to his senses, Sha-Kaan had become aware of his mortality as his health slowly suffered. And Hirad believed that his unflinching loyalty to the Kaan dragons had proved that he was far more than a glorified servant but was a true friend. It seemed that at last Sha-Kaan concurred with that view.

Hirad’s attention was caught by movement down on the terraces. A woman walked from behind a small tree-studded grotto and knelt

by a beautiful array of flowers on a small mound of carefully tended earth. She was mid-height, with a full figure, her auburn hair tied back with a black ribbon. She plucked some weeds from the bed and Hirad saw her nipping the dead-heads from some of the taller fronds whose large yellow blooms blew in the gentle warm breeze.

As always when he saw her, Hirad’s heart thudded a little harder and his mood dipped, sadness edging into his mind. To an untutored eye, the woman might have been simply enjoying the beauty she had created. But she was Erienne, who was enduring pain beyond comprehension, because beneath the bed lay the body of her daughter, Lyanna.

Lyanna, whom The Raven had come to save; whose five-year-old mind couldn’t contain the power within it; and whose uncontrolled magic threatened to destroy Balaia. Lyanna, who had been allowed to die by the very people Erienne had trusted to train her and so allow her to live.

And that last was something Hirad found impossible to really understand; even though during his half-year on Herendeneth he’d had plenty of opportunity to work it out. After all, two of the four Al-Drechar who had let Lyanna die were still alive and living in the habitable areas of their house here on the island. But their explanations about Lyanna’s burgeoning power and her inability to ever control it, given her age and physical frailty, went straight over his head.

All he knew was that the nucleus of the One magic that Lyanna had hosted had been transferred to Erienne even as the little girl had died. And that Erienne hated it - felt it was a disease she couldn’t cure - and that made her hate the surviving Al-Drechar even more. It made her head ache, she said, and though the Al-Drechar, both frail old elven women, said they could train her to control, use and develop it, she wouldn’t as much as acknowledge their presence.

Hirad could understand that reaction. In fact he remained astounded she hadn’t tried to kill the surviving pair. He knew what he’d want for those who murdered any child of his. But he was grateful nonetheless. Because, despite Sha-Kaan’s current light mood, the dragon’s exile in Balaia was slowly killing him; and the Al-Drechar with their understanding and expertise in dimensional theory were the Kaan’s best chance of getting home.