The forest hollow opened into cathedral space.
Eira had chosen well, as she always did, a vast natural amphitheatre carved by some forgotten glacial age into the endless canopy of Hell's Paradise Island's endless forest — a bowl of moss-veiled stone perhaps four hundred yards across, its lip ringed by primordial trees whose root systems had been allowed, over centuries, to fuse into a living bulwark that the surrounding forest treated with the wary deference one reserves for older cousins.
The air here tasted of nothing; there was no spoor or birdsong neither distant surf.
Whatever the endless forest had decided this hollow was for; it had long since agreed that the answer did not include witnesses.
Phei descended the last of the stone steps and stood at the hollow's centre, unhurried, his amethyst eyes sweeping the place once.
"Here?"
"Here, master."
