Lonen's Reign: Sorcerous Moons 6 by Jeffe Kennedy

Author:Jeffe Kennedy
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: Brightlynx
Published: 2019-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

9

“IT’S AN AUDACIOUS plan,” Arnon commented after stroking his neat beard in silence a few moments. “I have to hand it to your Oria—she doesn’t think small.”

“She’s your Oria, too,” Lonen replied without rancor. “Your sister and your queen.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Arnon waved that away, still deep in thought. “The communication is a problem.”

“That’s what I told Oria. She says she has a solution.” Tired of sitting, Lonen rose from the study table and paced over to the window, one of the few in the palace proper, and pulled aside the hide covering it to keep the warmth in. The new apartments would have many windows, according to the designs Arnon had showed him. His canny brother hoped to bring back the transparent glass the Bárans forged from the sands surrounding the city—or, better still, with the knowledge to make it themselves. The Destrye knew plenty about forging metal, Arnon reasoned—why not sand?

“If we leave Nolan here, even as a fake king surrounded by people who know better, what’s to stop him from summoning the Trom and their dragons to set fire to Arill City in our absence?”

“That would be bad,” Lonen agreed. Where had Oria gone?

“Then we’d be a scattered people,” Arnon continued, “with no base to speak of, our warriors at Bára and the rest of the Destrye isolated refugees.”

“Our warriors would be at Bára, regardless.”

“Yes, but even if we failed in the attack, the rest of our people would have a somewhat defensible place here. Some of our people would survive. At least they’d have a better chance together, with the moat and the stout walls of the palace between them and the golems and Trom. But not if Nolan has the power to undermine that.”

“True,” Lonen said. “But he won’t have real power. We’ll have people watching what he does, which will give us clues as to what the Bárans plan.”

“Not if the people watching him can’t communicate with us.”

“I think I mentioned already that Oria has a way around that.”

“What is it?”

Lonen shrugged. Still no sign of her. Easy to promise to trust. Not so easy to set aside his anxiety. He felt her presence, however, a bright and vital sun at the other end of the marriage bond—which felt stretched over a distance. Though…maybe less so that it had only a few minutes ago?

“It’s a real flaw in the plan,” Arnon argued, as if Lonen had denied it. “A horse and rider, even with fresh mounts at intervals and going top speed through the tunnels, would still take days. Overland would take even longer. Birds… maybe we could use birds, but they’d need at least a day each way, and we don’t have messenger birds trained to find Bára. Besides, the Trom dragons could burn them from the air. And sending messenger birds could alert the Bárans to our movements and the element of surprise would be lost.”

“Also true,” Lonen answered, though Arnon hardly needed a response.

“I suppose we could just leave Mother in charge and trust her to use her best judgment.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.