Sildaan pushed herself away from the ground, her arms unsteady beneath her. She was stunned by the cold and turned a numb face towards the temple. She barely recognised it. Ice sheathed it, obscuring the stone and hanging in spears from ledges and sills. Frost rimed the stone apron and threw a shroud across the canopy at the edge of the temple clearing. All was white.
Sildaan felt a strong hand under her arm and allowed Garan to help her to her feet.
‘Careful,’ he said. ‘It’s slippery.’
Sildaan nodded, watching the frost begin to puddle and run away to feed all of Beeth’s roots and branches. It melted from the bodies of the TaiGethen. Sildaan put a hand to her mouth. Their faces were blackened, ruined by frostbite and burned beyond all recognition. They lay in pieces. Like statues pushed violently onto their backs. Limbs had sheared from bodies, whose attitudes at the moment of their deaths relaxed as the ice deserted them.
A bird called across the apron. Sildaan started.
‘It’s so quiet,’ she breathed. She rubbed her hands together and blew on them to try and get some feeling back. ‘What did you do?’
‘I told you our magic was powerful,’ said Garan.
‘Not the half of it,’ said Sildaan. She managed a timid smile and looked at her hands. The trembling had nothing to do with the cold. Her voice fell to a whisper. ‘Still. It looks like this might be easier than I thought.’ Auum hissed in a breath through his teeth. The damage was an affront to Beeth, the god of root and branch. Crude, careless, ugly. Split branches, broken vine and trampled brush. Caused by those not born to the forest. Those whom the TaiGethen were blessed by Yniss to hunt down.
Auum knelt and traced his fingers over ground that still retained the faintest vestiges of heavy-shod footprints. Here in the middle of the rainforest. Almost as far from the coast as it was possible to get. Auum left his hand in the dirt while the rain cascaded over his body from a huge leaf just above his head. He let Gyal’s tears refresh him and the sounds of the downpour rush through him.
He stood and faced his mentor, the Priest Serrin, whom it had been his honour to protect these ten years since his escape to Calaius. The priest was tall. His head was shaven. His body, naked but for a loincloth and leather shoes, was painted entirely white. Studs and rings adorned his ears and nose.
Serrin was one of the Silent. Dedicated to mute observance of Yniss in his temples, a keeper of archives and relics.
‘Strangers,’ Auum said, rising to his feet. ‘Closing on Aryndeneth.’ Serrin’s large oval eyes narrowed. Auum could see him weighing up a decision to speak. Out here it was permitted, though the Silent struggled with the occasional necessity nonetheless.
‘Which?’ asked Serrin, his voice hoarse and quiet.
‘This is not the Terassin. It’s too clumsy for them. Men. Fifteen at least.’ Auum spat. ‘A thousand years of blessed isolation. Why couldn’t they leave us alone?’
Serrin’s eyes betrayed his concern. The first sails had been spotted fifteen years ago. Men. Promising friendship and stinking of treachery and deceit. They had been warned away from the forest. It seemed that warning had gone unheeded.
‘We’ll catch them long before they reach Aryndeneth,’ said Auum. ‘This trail is fresh and they’ll be slow. They’re carrying too much weight.’
Auum moved off along the trail. The day was half done. Rain had been falling incessantly, feeding the ground and filling the leaves of the canopy that reached up high to grab Gyal’s tears as they fell. Down on the ground it was dark. Banyan, balsa, fig, liana and vine choked the forest floor. Dense low bush spread thick tendrils that snagged the careless foot. Too much had been hacked aside. A pathway had been cut wide enough for three walking abreast.
Auum growled. It was time.
Serrin reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a small lidded clay pot, closed with a leather band. He opened it and dipped two fingers of his right hand into it. Keeping his face to the ground he smeared the white paint across his cheeks, nose and forehead, working it to re-cover every pore.
Auum watched him for a moment, seeing the deliberate movements and the intensity in every stroke before re-applying his own camouflage. The brown and green paints felt cool against his skin. And empowering. Auum sent a prayer to Yniss to guide his hands and keep his senses sharp. When he had finished, he saw Serrin watching him. The priest, face startling white and eyes gleaming with passion, nodded.
‘Now we hunt.’ ‘Move on, it’s nothing,’ said Haleth, scratching ineffectually at his sword arm through his leather. ‘Just one of those stupid little pig things.’
‘Tapir,’ said Arshul, the whisper-thin assassin.
Haleth shrugged. ‘If you say so.’
‘No,’ said another. Herol, it was. Called himself One-Eye. Confusing considering he was blind in neither. ‘I saw something. Just a flicker. Pale like a spirit.’
‘I saw it too,’ said Rissom, the big bull-headed Racheman.
He was suffering with a fever after a bite from something horrible. He wasn’t alone of course. But at least he wasn’t whining about it though the discharge from his nose and one ear looked bad. Haleth grimaced.
‘All right, you saw it. Congratulations. But let’s move on. Unless you want to be chasing your phantom until you drop dead from snake or frog or burrowing insect. The temple is still a day away. But if it makes you feel better, Herol, drop back twenty. Take three others with you. Rissom, take two and flank right. Kuthan, do likewise on the left. Keep in sight, keep calling out what you find. And nothing heroic, all right? This is a dangerous place. Let’s go.’
Haleth set off, hacking aside the dense trailing vines that grabbed and snagged at clothing and face. Thick branches hung low from trees to grasp them and the damn roots formed hoops to trip them. On Balaia, roots went underground. Haleth cursed the Calaian rainforest, its thick sludge underfoot and its blasted insect life. Why did he ever agree to come back?
His face was a mass of bites despite the poultices and drinks the elves who’d met their ship had given them. And there were eggs in his arms and legs. Apparently, there was something at the temple that would sort that out. A leaf not present in this part of the forest. There was something particularly hideous about having insects hatching under your skin, feasting off your flesh. Haleth shuddered and scratched. He’d rather get snake bite.
‘Fucking place gets worse by the hour,’ said Arshul. ‘Don’t the rain ever stop?’
‘Stop your moaning and get up here and help me,’ said Haleth. ‘I can barely make out which way the sun is going. Your eyes are better than mine.’
‘Well you’re going to have bugs coming out of yours soon, aren’t you? No wonder they’re failing you.’ Arshul came up to Haleth’s left and chopped away with smooth movements of his blade. He looked at the light and shade ahead. ‘We’re still going in the right direction. Mainly.’
‘Good,’ said Haleth. He tripped on a hidden root and stumbled, bracing himself against a balsa trunk. ‘Bugger it.’
‘What happened to our guide? Sildaan promised us one.’
‘Sharp ears are good at promises, not so good at delivering,’ said Haleth.
Something rushed across their path, perhaps ten yards ahead. Light and shade. Quick and gone as soon as he had seen it. Arshul pointed.
‘That’s it,’ he said, voice trembling. ‘A ghost in the trees.’
‘Sighting dead ahead,’ called Haleth, his heart thudding hard in his chest. ‘Ten yards moving left to right. Heads up, One-Eye, coming your way.’
‘I hear you, boss.’
The company was still moving but very slowly. Every eye strained to see whatever it was. Haleth had a nagging feeling he recognised it, but in the downpour and almost lost in the shadows and ridiculously dense vegetation, there was no telling for sure.