The Raven Collection

With the sun climbing into the morning sky, humidity and temperature rose with the mist as it steamed from every leaf. Rebraal smiled grimly. Born and bred to the oppressive heat that built with every heartbeat, he moved easily, his breath even, his body sweating to keep him in balance.

At the end of this path however, any strangers would already be suffering as they had every day of their journey towards Aryndeneth. He understood what the conditions did to a man who was ill-prepared for them. Critical fluid loss, lethargy, heat sickness. The heat played tricks with the mind, made a man slow and irritable. And that was just the start of his problems.

Never mind the snakes, the big cats and the spiders; those you could see and fight. But the biting, crawling, burrowing insects and their all but invisible cousins, they could not be fought, only endured and cured. With herb and flower if you knew how, with magic if you didn’t. No one was immune. Not the elves born here and certainly not strangers. Rebraal and the Al-Arynaar drank a crushed herb and petal drink morning and night. It kept the disease away, killed the eggs laid in the skin and lessened the itching. Nothing, though, would stop the barrage. The rainforest and everything that lived 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 ru

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 sca

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.

Erie

All the while she hummed Lya

Erie

It was fitting that Lya

Erie

But the colleges were greedy for her power or, failing that, anxious she be killed. Erie

And then, at the very last, when victory had seemed within their grasp, when The Raven had seemed triumphant, the ultimate betrayal had taken her beautiful dancing child from her. They, the Al-Drechar, had decreed that Lya

She glanced down at the ruins of the house. Two of them still lived. Elven witches who by rights should be dead but who The Raven now protected. She knew why and even sometimes confessed to herself they were right but she hated them all for it anyway.

A wave of guilt broke through her mind and her song faltered

even as the tears threatened behind her eyes. But she hated no one more than herself. After all, everything that had happened was as a direct result of what she had wanted. Gods, she’d even slept with Denser that first time to conceive a child she felt might have the potential to develop the One magic.

Everything had gone according to her plan but the One had proved too strong, too chaotic. Impossible to control. In Dordover, they had made the mistake of awakening the magic in a mind too young to cope. That was why Erie