Nastasha’s genius took over, and she measured all the critical distances and angles. She marked out the base of the unit with chalk. She measured again. With a hand drill, she bored holes in the volcanic rock, filled the holes with quick-setting putty, and threaded in the anchor bolts. She measured again. Next, she clamped down the case, congratulating herself for being right on target. Even though the case was waterproof, she rigged flashing to divert any rain runoff or snowmelt from its base. Then she attached the dish—which required tightening twelve connectors. After precisely orienting the dish, her final step was to clamp on the solar array, with its heated snow-shield. When everything was secured, she donned her headset, extended a thin wire out in front of her mouth, and flicked on the power. The gear hummed to life.
“Yori One, Yori One One,” she called.
“Yori One,” came a male voice. Excellent, she thought. This trip would have been wasted if that hadn’t worked.
“Yori Three, Yori One One,” she called.
“Yori Three,” came another male’s voice. Hello my love, she thought. So far, so good. Now the moment of truth…
“Yori One Three, Yori One One,” she called.
No response.
“Yori One Three, Yori One One,” Nastasha tried again.
“Yori One Three,” came the whisper of a man out of breath.
Yes! Two more to go.
“Yori Two Zero, Yori One One,” Nastasha said.
“Yori Two Zero,” was the quick response. It was a female this time—Queen Alethea! Nastasha didn’t have to prompt Her Majesty for the last step. “Yori Three, Yori Two Zero,” said the queen.
“Yori Three.”
That’s it! Nastasha thought. Prince Jaimin, down in the Black Tube Caves, was now communicating with his mother far to the north in the Audician capital. The final test—whether the solar panels worked well enough to recharge the batteries—would have to wait until sunrise, but Nastasha wasn’t going to stick around until then. Of course they would work. She unplugged her headset from the relay and connected it to the receiver on her belt. Using a pocket saw, she cut some brush to disguise the apparatus.
The next voice Nastasha heard was that of young Nikoleta, who was by Jaimin’s side. One of Nikoleta’s many hobbies had been to study the Celmarean language. By age ten, she was completely fluent. After hearing the troops in Black Tube Caves brushing up on their war codes, she had suggested using the Celmarean language to encode military transmissions. And she offered her services as translator.
“Armen aranala distreana,” said Nikoleta.
There was a long pause, and then the queen came back with: “Ar elo?”
“Nikoleta Tselmarina.”
“Ana…orena panesurea demei tsan ri…” said Queen Alethea.
There were risks in following Nikoleta’s idea. First off, the Arrans didn’t speak Celmarean, so they couldn’t follow the conversation without translation. This meant the spread-out Arran and Audician forces needed to have at least one Celmarean translator in each critical location. And then there was the question of Radovan. While Alethea didn’t believe the Destaurian king knew enough Celmarean to make sense of any transmissions he intercepted, he might have had Celmarean books on hand with which he could get his men up to speed quickly.
The Arran and the Audician generals found the attack plans they had been pondering to be remarkably similar. Nastasha listened to the back-and-forth as she made her way carefully down the cliff face. She gave up trying to figure out what was being said in the island language, but she enjoyed hearing a queen and a ten-year-old girl discussing military strategy.
______
A chill shook Eleonora awake.
Disoriented, she found herself looking up into darkness. It felt like there was a cold, hard floor beneath her. Had she fallen out of bed?
She inhaled. Freezing air burned her sinuses and teased from them a sharp chemical odor. That’s not normal, she thought. She shifted her tongue in her mouth. Both were parched.
She blinked and squinted, turning her head to the left and right to see where she was, and it was quite clear where she wasn’t. Her bed, her satin sheets, and her fine quilts were nowhere in sight. She wasn’t even in her room! A few ragged blankets she didn’t recognize lay in a heap on the floor not far away.
Her heartbeat grew faster and much louder, as her body recalled even before her mind did the strange circumstances under which she had gone to sleep.
Don’t panic, she told herself. It will upset the baby. The baby! She felt her abdomen. She could feel the child moving within her.
Where are we? she asked her child. She’d read about those who walk in their sleep, and wondered if her pregnancy-affected mind had delivered her to some dank corner of the palace basement.
She lifted her head to see better, and noticed a sharp beam of sunlight shining down from a rectangular opening in the high ceiling, casting a long white streak on a stone floor. “Is anyone here?” she called.
There was no answer. “Hello,” she called out weakly, “is anyone here?”
Hearing only silence, she went through the elaborate process of standing up from the floor in the ninth month of pregnancy. She was still in her nightclothes, which were dry, but very cold. Aside from the normal aches, nothing new hurt.
The last things she remembered were the conversations she’d had with her father and her husband. Yes, Denda came to me and warned me. And then I stayed up, staring at the ceiling, holding the sword at my side. But what happened afterward? Had she been sedated in her sleep by the Arrans and stolen away? That might explain the irritating chemical smell that now permeated her nasal cavity. Again, she told herself not to panic.
If she indeed had been taken, where was everyone else? Where was her husband?
“Helloooooo,” she called, peering up into the aperture above. The bright blue sky up there was cloudless. Near her, just beyond the edge of the light, a patch of stone wall was visible, and she approached it. Sliding her feet along the floor to detect obstacles, she ran her fingers along the wall to see how far the room extended. After a few meters, she came to a right-angled corner. She followed the new wall and encountered another corner; the same distance brought her to a third corner, and then the same distance again to a fourth, which put her back at the spot where she had started. The room was perfectly square, about ten meters along each wall.
Princess Eleonora sat down again with her back to the wall, trying to come to terms with the real possibility that she was someone’s captive. Surely, she thought, any moment Denda would come to rescue her. He would slay her captors, and bring her home to her husband.
She waited, eyes closed, and tried to distract herself with fond memories.
Two and a half hours passed. No one came for her.
She got up again to stretch her legs, and noticed that the shaft of sunlight had moved toward the center of the chamber. It had begun to illuminate what looked like a tuft of hair. She drew closer to investigate. Squatting, with one hand on the floor for balance, she tugged on the hair.
Her husband’s lifeless face rolled into the light.
She screamed.
CHAPTER NINE
T he Arrans, the Celmareans, and their Audician hosts had gathered for a late breakfast in the ballroom of the Audician palace. Toward the end of the meal, Elaina excused herself and hurried toward the door. Before Elaina even made it out, Alessa was up and chasing after her.
“What is it?” Alessa called.
“Follow me!” Elaina said. Not once looking back, Elaina speed-walked the length of the palace’s main corridor, and then ran up the few flights of stairs to her suite. Alessa caught up with her just outside her door.
“What’s wrong?” Alessa asked her.
Elaina’s stare was blank. She looked ill, and she was out of breath. “It’s my sister, Eleonora,” she said. “I feel her. I know it’s…her. And her lover is dead!”
“Oh, goodness. Take it easy.” Alessa helped Ela
ina inside and closed the door. Elaina ran to her bed, threw herself on to it, and curled up, eyes closed, her head half buried in her luxurious white covers.
“Don’t contact her!” Alessa warned. “Not now.”
“I can calm her down,” Elaina said.
“No. That’s not going to help. It will only confuse her.”
Elaina opened her eyes, rejoining the moment. “The poor sweetheart,” she said.
“Her lover is dead?”
“It’s…her husband,” Elaina said. “And…and she’s trapped in a dark cell.”
“Is she in immediate danger?”
“Didn’t seem like it,” Elaina said. “She’s just trapped. That’s all I saw. And her dead husband is in there with her. She’s just found him. How horrible!”
“Okay. Okay. Let her grieve alone,” said Alessa. “There’s no reason for you to share that. Poor thing.”
“She thinks the Arrans have her. She thinks we slaughtered her husband.”
“Why would she think that?”
“I don’t know. That’s just what I feel.”
“Is there anything else?” Alessa asked.
“I can try…”
“No, no, no. Sorry. Never mind for now,” Alessa said. “We need to share this news with the others.”
“Can’t I stay here for a while?” Elaina asked. “I’ll join you soon. I don’t feel well.”
“Not a good idea,” Alessa said, reaching for Elaina’s hands. “Get up. I can’t let you lie here and dwell on this.”
“But I feel awful,” Elaina pleaded. “Her grief is gnawing at me. Just let me be for a while. I don’t want to see anyone else. I’m going to embarrass myself downstairs.”
“Errrgh. Come on. Up,” Alessa said. “I’m sorry. Sometimes you’ll be slammed with thoughts and emotions from all angles, and there is no running away.” Elaina let Alessa raise her to a sitting position at the edge of the bed. “Trust me,” Alessa said. “You can untangle yourself from her turmoil.”
“How?”
“Acknowledge what you feel. Don’t ignore it, but try to continue to function at the same time.”
“But he died, Alessa! She loved him!” Elaina’s tears flowed.
“I know it’s hard,” Alessa said. “I know. It’s really hard to deal with. I’m sorry. Breathe deeply.”
“Okay.” Elaina took one, two, and three incredibly deep breaths. It helped her to regain perspective. Her sister’s agony was still there, but it wasn’t screaming as loudly for her attention.
“Come on, let’s go back downstairs.”
Elaina ran to the bathing room, soaked a cloth in cold water, and cooled her swollen face with it before the mirror. And then she left with Alessa.
The Audician war room wasn’t in the palace itself. It was in the basement of a nearby chapel, accessible from the palace by one of the many secret tunnels that ran beneath the city streets. The spire of the chapel doubled as an antenna for the army’s communications gear.
A select group was to assemble in the war room after breakfast, to finalize the plans that had been suggested earlier in the day. The war council included Elaina, Alessa, Alethea, the Arran vice admiral Kerran, and the Audician general Yern. Far to the south in Black Tube Caves, the Arran decision makers, including General Valeriy and Prince Jaimin, stood by on the communicator with their ten-year-old translator Nikoleta at the ready.
Just before the meeting began, Queen Alethea met Alessa and Elaina in the anteroom, and Elaina, still sickened from experiencing her sister’s grief, described to the queen what she’d felt.
“Elaina, my dear, I believe it’s time for you and your sister to get fully acquainted,” said Queen Alethea.
“I told her not to,” Alessa said.
“I’m not talking about sharing her sorrow,” Alethea said. “I’m talking about finding out exactly what her situation is. Whether she knows who and what she is. Where she is.”
“And who has her,” Elaina added.
“Oh, I’m reasonably sure of who has her,” said Alethea. “It would be just like Radovan to lock up his own daughter in order to lure us into rescuing her. He failed to assassinate us, and his backup plan with the children failed, so now he’s resorted to this drastic option.”
Elaina instinctively felt that Alethea was spot-on with her theory. And Elaina had an additional theory, one she hoped wasn’t true: that Radovan had only kept Eleonora alive and raised her to adulthood to use her as a pawn in his endgame. “Do you think Radovan killed Eleonora’s husband?” Elaina asked.
“Yes, I do,” the queen said. “I suspect he’s trying to shock your sister into Kalmise, so she will contact you for help. When you show up, he plans to kill you both.”
“Of course!” Alessa said.
“Well, I’ll just have to show up, then,” Elaina said.
The others were silent.
“Not to spring his trap and die, of course,” Elaina continued, “but I do need to get close to him. I’m sure I can heal him. That’s our plan, isn’t it?”
“But…doesn’t the person you’re healing need to be close to death for the light to flow?” Alessa asked.
“Yes.”
“So you’d need to kill him, or nearly so, before you could heal him?” asked Alethea.
“I suppose I would,” Elaina said.
Again, silence from the other two.
“If it works,” said the queen, “it could resolve much.”
“Do we know where my father is?” Elaina said.
“Not in Arra, as far as our scouts can tell,” Queen Alethea said. “He may have a general or two in Arra, but he’s likely monitoring the war from his palace.”
“Then that’s where I’ll go.”
“You’re not going to be able to just saddle up Nightmare and ride on down to Destauria,” Alessa told Elaina. “There’s an enemy army in the way.”
“Alessa’s right,” said Alethea. “First, we must proceed with our counterstrike, and, Elaina, we shall need your help with that. I don’t think your father will kill Eleonora as long as she’s still useful to him. In the meantime, try to get to know your sister. You’re developing a connection with her. Find out what you can. An opportunity may arise.”
“Very well,” Elaina said. “If Eleonora can sense me, and somehow hear me, how much should I share with her?”
“Share everything,” said Alethea. “The more open you are with her, the stronger your bond will become.”
“Remember, she’s our sister too,” Alessa added. “Our lost sister. She’s a part of the council, whether she knows it or not.”
An aide to General Yern approached the ladies. “I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Your Royal Highness,” he said. “We are ready to begin.”
“Thank you,” Alethea said.
The ladies entered the torch-lit main chamber, an ancient round room with walls of polished stone. Pillars encircled a central open area where a massive round table of stone had sat for centuries, surrounded by twenty chairs of carved wood. A butterfly-shaped set of loudspeakers was propped up on a stand in the center of the table. A few small receivers were set out to pick up the conversation.
“Are these on?” Elaina asked Alethea.
“No. The general wants to make sure we all are in concurrence before sharing the final plan with those in the south.”
“Our plan is simple,” said General Yern after all had been seated. “We will use Arra’s geography to our advantage. Our army will form a well-supplied and reinforced line from the sea to the cliffs, and sweep steadily southward. If we take our time and don’t overreact to clashes and break the line, we can press Radovan’s men southward all the way back to Destauria.”
The general continued: “By nightfall tomorrow, our men will already be in Arran territory. As we push southward, our line will grow stronger, because the Arran army will join us as soon as we pass their position at Black Tube Caves. Meanwhile, our combined navies will engage and push ba
ck Radovan’s fleet, and, if the situation at sea is well in hand, we will land our Celmarean volunteers and more combat units north of the Kaela River. Once we reach the Arran capital, we will besiege the castle.”
“I suggest that we send soldiers into the castle through the secret passages,” Alessa said. “Do the Destaurians know about the secret passages?” Alessa asked Alethea.
“I’m not sure,” Alethea said. “But even if they do, that’s still a good idea.”
“Brilliant!” said General Yern. “After retaking the castle and the city, we will expel Radovan’s minions from the rest of the land. It will take all we have, but our combined strength should be enough to overcome their technological advantages.”
“What about the range? The Eastern slopes?” Alessa asked.
“We will send a few units,” Yern said, “but it’s not as much of a risk. Once we hold the lowlands we can defend against attackers filtering through the passes.”
“Where will you need us?” Alessa asked Alethea.
“We would like you, and Elaina, and Makias, to precede the army and follow the base of the ridge back to Black Tube Caves. They need a second translator there, and Makias is perfect for the job.”
“And to get there, we’re going to trek through a forest full of enemy fighters?” Elaina asked.
“We shall send protectors with you, my dear,” said the queen. “And I understand from General Yern that the weather could help conceal you on your journey.”
“Yes, yes,” said General Yern. “Heavy snow is expected this afternoon.”
“But this means you must start southward at once. Elaina, how does this plan agree with you?” Alethea asked.
“It’s a good plan,” Elaina said. “But I doubt my group will make it the whole way without running into enemies. And all of you must know that if the divine spirit spares a man, and he’s wounded in front of me, I will heal him, regardless of his insignia.”
General Yern sighed. “Your Royal Highness, our capacity to supervise prisoners of war is limited. Our principal objective must be to secure the Arran cities.”
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